Why So Many Educated Young Adults Remain Underlings in an Age of Opportunity

There are books that we read. And there are books that quietly read us for the rest of our lives.

I was fifteen when my English teacher introduced our class to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Much of the play has faded from memory, but one exchange between Cassius and Brutus has remained with me for more than half a century.

Cassius, frustrated by Caesar’s growing influence, asks:

“Now, upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, that he is grown so great?”

Then comes the line almost every schoolchild remembers:

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

For years I thought Shakespeare was writing about ambition.

Today, I think he was asking a much deeper question.

What exactly was Caesar feeding on?

One quiet afternoon at Horizons Café, that question returned to me.

Old men like me enjoy cafés for reasons that have little to do with coffee. Young people come looking for Wi-Fi. Old people come looking for wisdom. The coffee is merely the entrance fee.

A young man approached my table.

“May I join you, Mzee?”

I nodded.

He placed a thick leather folder on the table with remarkable care.

“I have brought my future,” he said.

I smiled.

“No,” I replied gently. “You have brought your certificates.”

He looked puzzled.

“I have a bachelor’s degree.”

“Good.”

“I have a master’s degree.”

“Excellent.”

“I’ve completed professional certifications.”

“Wonderful.”

“I’ve attended workshops.”

“Very good.”

“I’ve taken online courses.”

“Splendid.”

He paused before asking the question that seemed to have been waiting inside him for years.

“So why has my life refused to begin?”

His question reminded me immediately of Cassius.

“Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed?”

The young man was intelligent. He was disciplined. He was polite. He had done almost everything society had asked him to do.

Study hard.

Graduate.

Keep learning.

Collect more qualifications.

Yet somehow his life seemed permanently parked in neutral.

Like thousands of educated young adults, he had become trapped between qualification and traction.

“My grandson,” I asked, “what do you believe employers buy?”

“My qualifications.”

“What do customers buy?”

“My expertise.”

“What do investors buy?”

“My business idea.”

I shook my head.

“They buy none of those.”

He looked surprised.

“They buy solved problems.”

The table fell silent.

I reached for the sugar bowl.

“Suppose this café had no sugar. And suppose I spent the next hour explaining the chemistry of sugar.”

He smiled.

“I would still drink bitter coffee.”

“Exactly.”

“Knowledge is valuable. But activated knowledge changes somebody’s experience.”

For generations, education taught us how to acquire knowledge.

The modern world increasingly rewards something different.

It rewards people who can convert knowledge into value.

That value may become employment.

It may become entrepreneurship.

It may become consulting.

It may become invention.

But it always begins the same way.

Someone else’s problem becomes your purpose.

The young man stared quietly at his folder.

I realised he had been treating his education like a destination. It had never occurred to him that it was only raw material.

“My grandson,” I continued, “a university gives many people a magnificent granary full of seed.”

“The tragedy is not that the granary is empty.”

“The tragedy is that the seed never leaves the granary.”

Knowledge is acquired.

Knowledge is admired.

Knowledge is certified.

Knowledge is displayed.

But knowledge that never enters the soil produces no harvest.

Suddenly, Cassius returned to my mind.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars…”

I still agree with him.

But perhaps our generation must finish the sentence differently.

The fault is not in our stars.

Nor is it in our universities.

Nor is it in our degrees.

Nor entirely in the economy.

Perhaps the fault lies in believing that knowledge alone is enough.

Knowing is not the harvest.

Activation is.

The young man finally closed his folder.

For the first time since sitting down, he stopped talking about qualifications.

Instead, he began talking about people.

People struggling to market their businesses.

People overwhelmed by technology.

People unable to organise information.

People facing problems he knew how to solve.

His eyes looked different.

Hope had quietly replaced frustration.

As we stood to leave, I smiled.

“My grandson,” I said, “for more than fifty years I have wondered what meat Caesar fed upon.”

He waited.

“I think I finally know.”

“It wasn’t power.”

“It wasn’t privilege.”

“It wasn’t even knowledge.”

“He fed upon activated knowledge.”

He took what he knew and converted it into influence.

Into usefulness.

Into courage.

Into service.

Into action.

Perhaps that is why he grew so great while others remained spectators.

Today I meet many parents whose educated sons and daughters have done everything right, yet still struggle to gain traction.

I do not believe they lack intelligence.

I do not believe they lack effort.

I increasingly believe they are missing something no one ever taught them.

Not another qualification.

Not another certificate.

But the ability to activate what they already know.

Because in every generation there are two kinds of graduates.

Those who collect knowledge.

And those who feed upon it.

The difference changes lives.

⸻

Dr Petero Wamala, DBA
Founder, The Educated Adult Child Initiative

Making sense of change through ethical storytelling.

Because knowing alone is not enough.