The Betrayal of a Generation: When Education No Longer Guarantees a Future

I wake up every day carrying a weight that grows heavier with each passing year. It is the weight of disappointment, of anger, of a sadness too deep to name. How did we get here? How did we become a nation where young minds, once filled with dreams and ambitions, are now left stranded with diplomas that mean nothing?

Every year, thousands of students graduate, clutching their certificates with hope in their eyes. But what awaits them? Not the careers they spent years preparing for, not the professional paths they dreamed of. Instead, they are pushed into survival mode. The microbiologist becomes a makeup artist. The engineer turns into a street vendor. The accountant, with distinctions in school, is now operating a Point-of-Sale (POS) machine to make ends meet.

It should make us angry. It should make us restless. And yet, where is our outrage?

While the youth struggle to find meaning in a country that has abandoned them, the politicians thrive. They play their games, shifting alliances, hoarding wealth, making promises that will never be kept. Governance is a forgotten duty—replaced by mindless power struggles and personal enrichment. And when we try to speak, when we dare to challenge the dysfunction, our own peers rise against us. The same youths drowning in poverty defend the very people who stole their futures.

I saw a video recently of a politician’s son living lavishly, flaunting a lifestyle funded by the wealth of a nation in ruins. And instead of outrage, people hailed him. They admired him, envied him. Not once did they stop to ask, where did this wealth come from? What hospitals could have been built with that money? How many jobs could have been created?

Who bewitched us?

Education, once a beacon of hope, is losing its value. Why pursue a degree when no job waits at the end of the tunnel? Why spend years studying when survival demands immediate alternatives? We are unknowingly tearing down the very thing that should uplift us. And the most painful part? The leaders we trusted to fix this mess don’t even care.

It is a betrayal. A betrayal of dreams. A betrayal of sacrifice. A betrayal of an entire generation that deserved better.

And so I ask, my fellow youth, when will we be angry? When will we demand better? When will we stop celebrating the wealth stolen from our future? Because until we do, we will remain trapped, watching as the privileged grow richer while the educated struggle to survive.