Graduation is coming, sooner rather than later, and many of us have yet to sit and really consider the realities of life ahead.

There are many possible roads to traverse upon walking out of commencement. Some will return to school in the fall, in pursuit of a master’s or doctoral degree. Others will land jobs related to their major. Yet, a good number more will struggle to get by or even return home to live with their parents.

This is a rising trend. Earlier this month, USA Today published an editorial lamenting the plight of the so-called “Boomerang Generation.” Many of us—nearly a third of Americans aged 20-34—will return home after college, unable to stand on our own two feet.

But why does obtaining a bachelor’s degree not entitle us to live the good life, to land the good jobs, and to line our pockets with twenties?

Well for starters, we have to compete with our peers for the same jobs. According to the Census Bureau, 28 percent of Americans 25 or older hold Bachelor’s degrees. Thusly, employers are faced with a plethora of applicants, all equally qualified in terms of education. This drives the competition down to the specifics; have you done an internship, what were your extracurricular activities, and where were you employed? These, not your academic credentials, have increasingly more bearing on whether or not you can beat out the others in the interview process.

That’s not to mention the rising importance of graduate degrees. With the prevalence of bachelor’s holders, the master’s degree has become the new hotness. Unlike an undergraduate degree program, graduate studies are more in depth, focus solely on your area of study, and are not hindered by an excess of general education requirements. In a way, graduate programs are what going to college should be.

The undergraduate program requires that you spend nearly a third of your time at school studying basic generalized requirements. Similar to high school, you need to take a certain number of classes in history, mathematics, science, English, foreign language, and the arts before you can graduate. That is absent in graduate programs, where you work in your concentration alone, obtaining the knowledge and skills necessary to excel in your field, above and beyond what your generalized bachelor’s experience can give you.

Furthermore, in the same way that your high school degree can lead you to major in anything in your undergraduate studies, many graduate programs are open to all majors. It is the graduate school that puts the emphasis on preparing you for what employers will expect in that field.

Don’t get me wrong, bachelor’s degrees are very worthwhile in the long run. The Census Bureau reported that average earnings for all bachelor’s degree holders in 2004 was $51,554, nearly $23,000 more a year than an average high school graduate. However, the competition for those $50,000 a year jobs is incredibly tough, and a fresh graduate often lacks the experience required for such jobs.

Compounding that problem is the fact that many of us will leave college immersed in debt. The Tampa Tribune reported that today’s college graduates will owe $19,000 in student loans That’s not even mentioning the debts accrued on credit cards during and after college while trying to afford health care, gas, and food. And with such a competitive job market, it can be very hard to make ends meet and still maintain a schedule of regular repayment.

Sorry to paint such a daunting and dreary picture of the future, but these are the realities of the modern job market. That’s not to say that we’re all going to stumble and end up defaulting on our loans, fleeing collection agents, and living in cardboard boxes or vans down by the river. But many of us will land on unsure footing. The best I can say is start planning now for contingencies. Start trying to line up those job interviews, get those grad school applications in the mail, and start planning for life in the “real world.”