In less than two weeks, I will walk across a stage to accept the item listed at the bottom of my resume: my diploma.

Colleges and universities across the nation will spend hours recognizing graduates during commencement ceremonies. I ask you to take just a few minutes to lament our failing education system.

I’m earning a B.A. in journalism, but I didn’t get my journalism education in the hallways of NIU — I got it working at the Northern Star.

Not too long ago, journalism was a field that didn’t require a degree. If I had been able to go straight from high school to a newsroom (and also earn money, not spend it on classes), I’d be a much better journalist today.

There’s no doubt education credentials are valuable to some — I’d like my surgeon to have studied anatomy extensively. But what’s the value of a liberal arts degree? According to The Project on Student Debt, the average 2010 graduate had about $25,000 in student loans.

I don’t believe education is a waste of time in itself. I’ve taken some enlightening courses from some wonderful professors. If school was free and everyone could have as much education as they wanted, then by all means, let’s sit around and discuss Chaucer all day. I love the idea of the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

The problem is when education becomes an expensive hiring filter.

You can see the conundrum in the advertising schizophrenia of colleges these days — are they teaching us the critical thinking skills we need across a wide range of disciplines to encounter the world and make meaning of our lives? Or is it career, career, career?

A liberal arts education is stuck somewhere in-between the two. General education requirements are a redundant waste: topics students spent four years studying in high school.

College costs are rising (doubling in the last 10 years, according to CBS news), state funding is dwindling, and no one really knows what to do. But the college stigma slogs on, and we continue to ask 17 and 18 year olds to make large financial decisions they aren’t prepared for. Maybe campus tours should include investment seminars.

We don’t need everyone to go to college, as President Barack Obama wants. We need better high school education and affordable higher education for those who choose to go.

My generation is borrowing from its future (student debt just passed the $1 trillion mark, according to NPR) to do something it’s been told is the one path to success. How many of my generation’s great artists, writers, musicians, poets and philosophers will be lost because of it?

The last time there was gross over-lending to under-qualified candidates was during the housing bubble, and the recession it caused in 2008 is the reason recent college grads are told they still have trouble finding jobs.

I’ve secured a post-grad internship in my field and a part-time job, both of which I’m thankful to have. I don’t think I would have gotten them without my education. But I didn’t get them because of it.