With the return of cooler temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere, students return to centers of higher learning.

Many emulate the monarch butterfly (leave the birthplace, breed, and die), but others stand a chance of accomplishing a bit more. At the same time, any number of publications offer basic guides to student living, in the hopes that some of the little darlings remember that their parents pay for them to do something besides parade around Padre Island or Fort Lauderdale during spring break in a thong. Not only is this easy work for the author, but they're also reassuring for parents. However, none of them teach anything the students can use.

Guiding freshmen and sophomores away from stupid or self-destructive mistakes is a cottage industry --sooner or later, someone will write a "College for Dummies" book that includes fifty recipes utilizing ramen noodles and 100 ways to scam free phone calls back home. Invariably, this guide will never include the real concerns about campus living, such as the fact that those sales reps offering "guaranteed" credit card applications Are Not Your Friends. (Your credit history is the closest thing to a "permanent record" you'll ever see --default on a student loan, and you only lose out on your income tax refund check for the next fifteen years. Default on $60,000 of credit card debt, and you've resigned yourself to apartment living for the next decade.) The same thing goes for get-rich-quick schemes. The frat boys down the street may have managed to clear thousands of dollars in fraudulent tax refunds, but they will get caught, especially since they signed their real names and addresses to the tax returns. Most importantly, any "Dummies" guide will never impart the real wisdom of a college career, if only because misery loves company.

This is the lesson all college freshmen need to learn: Business, journalism, and English degrees are not real degrees. Contrary to what high school guidance counselors may say, a diploma for a BA in English guarantees success as a writer in the same way a videotape of "Armageddon" imparts knowledge of astrophysics or engineering. This is not a degree, this is a license to starve to death with the blessings of society. As much as I love my mother tongue, I have to advocate the clichéd PhD in basket-weaving before any English degree, if only because a few cattail fronds and some studiousness offer possibilities for enterprising street corner vendors. What choice does an unemployed English major really have, standing around the local red-light district with a sheaf of manuscripts in hand, whispering "Hey, meester. Wanna buy a dirty story?"

Likewise, considering the impending heat-death of the newspaper, as we know it, a journalism degree is recommended only because of a lack of federal subsidies for those wishing to drink themselves to death. More than any other business remaining today, journalism is dependent upon the Peter Principle. Considering the lousy pay, the poor conditions, and the intolerable colleagues, the only people who make a career of journalism are those too incompetent to better the world with a switch to food service. They move up the ranks as their more talented brethren get real jobs or commit suicide. Have pity upon the longtimers --the authors of most film, music, and political commentary columns not only whimper bitterly about how nobody born after 1950 reads newspapers any more, but also about how they didn't get the groupies their exposure promised. (Of the last we should be grateful. Due to appearance if not personality, most journalists couldn't get laid in Tijuana with $100 bills stuck in their jockstraps.)

Finally, the Master of Business Arts, a triple oxymoron, has an interesting pedigree. It was originally conceived so the scions of rich families could justify sending Junior and Muffy to college and guarantee that they'd come back with something besides a cocaine habit and chlamydia. The business degree rapidly became the road to rapid wealth for the deans of the innumerable business colleges that infest North America. As with journalism and English degrees, having a business degree guarantees no aptitude in the subject of study. Most business courses are a basic attempt to impart common sense and basic job skills upon dolts with brains too saturated with Miller Genuine Draft to function in society any other way. In a way, we should be thankful for the business degree, as it keeps a multitude of otherwise unemployable australopithecines doing their best to keep Scott Adams and the makers of Rohypnol financially solvent. Unfortunately, though, they breed like rats, and their children continue the mantra of "I'll make $100,000 right out of college! I don't know how, but Daddy will think of something."

So where should the youth of today look for financial security and job satisfaction? Beats me. If I knew, I wouldn't be working in the telecommunications industry. Remember, the only two places where individuals get paid to masturbate in public are in the literary arena and the sex industry, and you don't have the build for a porn star. In the meantime, tell the children to pick a vocation that takes advantage of their aptitudes and their interests, and hope for the best. Choosing an art degree over a PoliSci degree may not offer more money, but it decreases the chances of being carried off and devoured by invisible demons in the night.

Copyright © 1999 Paul T. Riddell

Paul T. Riddell is a Michigan-born, Texas-raised essayist and journalist currently residing in a fortified ranch on the slopes of Mount Briscoe overlooking downtown Dallas. For more abuse, please visit 'The Healing Power of Obnoxiousness' at http://www.hpoo.com