My son Karol graduated high school May 26. Like parents around the country, I’m proud of him, and I thank God that He let me at least reach the point I could deposit Karol on the threshold of adulthood. I pray He let me carry him through the next stage of life with health and the ability to work and contribute towards that stage.

Some might say every parent is proud of his child and high school graduation is no big deal. Well, lots of young people are also finding college graduation is no big deal when it comes time to work, because our economy has decided that entry level jobs are not priorities. But I’ll still insist on the importance of high school graduation.

Perhaps it’s because when I graduated 49 years ago, college was not automatic for every kid. I attended a college where I’d bet most of my fellow classmates were the first time college graduates in their families. No, St. Mary’s College was not Harvard with its “legacy” admissions, but it did what a lot of Catholic colleges and universities in the United States were once proud to consider their mission: giving kids a steppingstone into the American dream, supported with Catholic values. Too bad that doesn’t figure into U.S. News and World Report rankings, or some of them might take that mission up again.

High school is a basic literacy achievement — given that educational standards have been dumbed down. That said, in my day and subsequently there was increasing pressure to go to college. Today many young people are recognizing that trades are also honorable jobs that often produce concrete job openings faster and are necessary to American life. The globalization push of past decades that offshored American manufacturing hollowed out jobs for lots of Americans who didn’t need nor necessarily want a four-year college degree. The elites decided those jobs were disposable. They’re the same elites that now feel threatened by AI’s disposing of them.

My Karol is interested in engineering and computers, obviously technical fields that will assume increasing significance in the U.S. job market. He already thinks about how to secure his future in a volatile economy. That’s smart of him.

At the same time, that can’t be just an individual’s roll of the dice. Government needs to recognize its role in promoting the common good not just by respecting some imaginary “laws of the marketplace” but by pursuing policies aimed at building and bringing young people into a stable middle class. And companies need to realize that their bottom lines are not just what their stockholders see at the end of the second quarter but also whether their employment policies are creating consumers who can afford their goods.

My older son, John, graduated college with a business and international economy degree three years ago and is still looking for a permanent job. As I look back, in some ways I don’t envy these young men. I would not want to be a young person looking for a job these days. I went from graduate school in July to a full-time teaching load (albeit at part-time pay for the first year; Catholic schools like to teach about the social justice they don’t practice) in September. That was serendipity and/or Providence but is rarely seen these days.

The next few months will be spent with getting Karol ready for college. It’s a transition for me, too, as for the first time in 30 years the house won’t have any minor kids in it. My relation to the last of my kids will gradually now become one of adult to adult. That’s hard. But it’s glorious. It’s why I loved teaching college: it’s precisely those years when you see a kid walk in the door and a man or woman walk out. I pray that all goes well for Karol and for all the graduates headed for college this year. I pray God keep them close to His heart and His Church.