Students Hit the Books for More Than an Education : Trends: Many appear to take refuge in the campus routine, especially in troubled economic and social times.

When Carol Ziehm graduated from Mission Viejo High School, the effect was like stepping off the curb into oncoming traffic.

“The world was confusing,” says Ziehm, of Mission Viejo. “I felt kind of lost. I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.”

Buoyed by the A+ she had received in a high school accounting class, right out of high school she enrolled at Saddleback Community College in Mission Viejo and in two years received an associate’s degree in business. But figuring out how to apply it to the real world beyond college was daunting.

“It didn’t lead anywhere, so I just kept taking classes,” says Ziehm, 39, who says she spent many years as a “professional student.” “I figured there had to be something out there that was fulfilling and rewarding.”

For many, school provides a certain predictable structure that makes it a cozy and safe alternative to the real world with its corporate downsizing, deficit trade imbalance and a shaky Social Security system. School dictates where to go, what to do, when to do your homework and go to bed. It is more than an education in biology and economics. It teaches organization, discipline, time and money management.

Many appear to make a profession of being a student, especially in troubled economic and social times.

Like many students, Ziehm recalls her early college years as a time to do some serious thinking about herself. She says the time was right for it: a melancholia surrounded the end of the Vietnam War, and the president, once a figure of authority and respect, was resigning from the White House in shame, a cartoonish figure satirized in Mad Magazine. Ziehm says she felt the world was an unsafe and untrustworthy place, and she continued to seek comfort and protection in school.

“Saddleback was always there,” Ziehm says. “Education was great no matter how you felt about the world. I felt very lucky to have the community college available to me. It was a place to take your time and excel and find your niche.”

Marian Salzman, president and founder of BKG America, a market research firm based in New York that studies trends of the twentysomething generation, says, “There are so many freeways to becoming a smart, enlightened person. Formal school is only one of them.”

Salzman says many young people stay in school because it is an acceptable form of soul-searching in the years after high school. “We all seem to need a label,” Salzman says. “ ‘Student’ seems to be more acceptable than perhaps ‘slacker.’ ”

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“A lot of my friends don’t want to deal with the routine of the real world,” says Kurt Hueg, public information officer at Saddleback and a 1986 UCLA grad. He admits many of his fellow graduates, though they hold degrees from a competitive school, are underemployed.

Rather than committing to a career, Hueg says, “They seem to have spent the last few years just having a good time. School was a lot of fun. But now that they’re hitting 30, they’re beginning to sacrifice their idealism and start dealing with the reality of their careers.”

Hueg laments that students fees at the community college level and tuition at four-year universities are going up, up, up.

“Fees per unit of credit were less than $10. Now they’re $13, and (Gov. Pete) Wilson wants it to go to $20,” Hueg says. “We may be seeing an end to the professional student--certainly no one at USC or CSU can afford it.”

While community colleges offer a cheaper opportunity to bide time between high school and the real world, four-year universities and graduate schools also attract the professional student, says Anna Garza, director of the career development center at Chapman University in Orange.

“Every time the economy is poor, we see applications to the graduate school rise,” Garza says. “People don’t think there are jobs. They are waiting it out until this thing blows over.’ ”

Garza says many of Chapman’s 3,200 students arrive on campus with a sense of timing, as if their lives were chartered on a narrow course--bachelor’s degree by age 22, graduate school in two years, then an entry-level position with the right company, marriage, family, et cetera. But, she says, many students are mystified when that first job isn’t waiting for them as soon as they frame their degree and hang it on the wall.

“They’re not getting jobs right away, and it’s very stressful,” Garza says. “Parents don’t understand why it’s so hard, unless they themselves have been laid off.”

Garza says factors such as the bankruptcy of Orange County may dishearten college students, who may indeed opt for more college instead of venturing into an economy they perceive as being depressed.

“Many recent grads want to come back here to work because they see this as a warm, protective environment,” Garza says.

Rachel Strong, 23, of Santa Ana, says: “One of the scariest things is to not go to school every day. It’s been my security blanket for so long.”

Strong got her associate’s degree from Fullerton College and will receive a bachelor’s in public relations from Chapman University this spring. Her question is not if she should pursue her master’s degree, but when.

“I’m not in a big hurry to start a family,” says Strong, who married two years ago and just purchased a home with her husband, Robert, an engineer technician for a computer hardware company.

Strong’s mother was her age when she dropped out of college to start a family. She never went back to school, but instead took a job as a cashier with the Automobile Assn. of America, where she has been for 32 years.

“I don’t want to be stuck behind a desk,” says Strong, who dreams of being a public information officer for a police department. After six years of college, she has had four majors--beginning with pre-med, she also pursued graphic arts and something else (she doesn’t remember what) before settling on public relations.

“I may as well keep going, since I’m in the mode,” Strong says. “But I don’t want to get too many degrees because I heard the more degrees one has, the harder it is to get a job because employers think then they have to pay you more.”

Market researcher Salzman admits well-paying jobs are few and far between, even for those who graduated from the most prestigious universities. “Young people starting out today know there are no guarantees. They’ve watched as so many of their parents are laid off from companies they’ve worked for for 20, 30 or 40 years.

“I think it’s important no matter what the climate to get out there and travel and learn to support oneself, rather than stay in school,” Salzman says. “Personally, I think everyone should spend at least a year as a waitress.”