
There are 5,057 janitors in the U.S. with PhDs - surlyadopter
http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/why-did-17-million-students-go-to-college/27634
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elbenshira
This data is pretty useless without data from other time periods.

And it seems like bashing high education is the cool thing to do nowadays. We
use stories of the "I'm $200,000 in debt from my Ivy league B.A. in English
and no one wants to hire me!" nature to justify that higher education is
becoming irrelevant.

But I think we're all missing several pieces of the puzzle. One piece is that
forget that what we're trying to optimize is happiness, and if those 13.4% of
waiters are happy, then who cares if they have a BA or MA? OK, maybe we've
wasted government money on their education, but can we call it a waste just
because they didn't use that BA in English to do Englishy stuff? No. They're
probably a more refined person because of those four years.

I do agree that higher education is broken. But higher education is broken in
every single freaking country. The French spend less time in college, but they
have a higher unemployment rate than us. Kenya's universities are based on
entrance exams that encourages memorization and discourages critical thinking
and imagination. Asia's universities are based on elite entrance exams where
students to spend up to a year studying for.

Yes, higher education is broken. But so is everything else in this world.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_OK, maybe we've wasted government money on their education, but can we call
it a waste just because they didn't use that BA in English to do Englishy
stuff? No. They're probably a more refined person because of those four
years._

Are you willing to go up to 40 middle class families and demand that each of
them pay $1000 to have a more refined waiter who vaguely remembers some Proust
after partying for 4 years?

If not, then we can call it a waste.

Wasting "government money" isn't a tiny drop in some gigantic abstract pool of
thousand dollar bills. It's hard earned money taken by force from ordinary
Americans. It's not government money, it's your money.

~~~
Niten
> Are you willing to go up to 40 middle class families and demand that each of
> them pay $1000 to have a more refined waiter who vaguely remembers some
> Proust after partying for 4 years?

This is a foolish comment, even beyond your arbitrary splitting up the cost of
a degree between 40 "middle class families", or the insinuation that one can
actually earn a degree by simply "partying for 4 years."

The value of education goes beyond landing one a job. Simply having well-
educated citizens is of value to society -- especially in a representative
democracy, where our level of education has a direct impact on how wisely we
choose our own leaders. In fact, that education for its own sake is of great
value to society is the core assumption behind public education.

Besides which, how exactly would you propose to "fix" the "problem" of well-
educated people choosing overqualified jobs? With a state-controlled labor
market, dictating what kind of people are allowed to work what kind of jobs?

~~~
yummyfajitas
Any particular way of bringing aggregate costs down to the individual level is
arbitrary. I chose a method which illustrates the cost in simple human terms.
The fact is, a $10k/year subsidy for college (note: this is roughly the
subsidy for Rutgers, which I chose since I attended) is expensive. To give
that subsidy to one person, a median worker must work 2500 hours.

As for earning a degree by partying for 4 years, I stand by that claim.
College isn't that hard and plenty of idiots pass while learning very little.
Believe me, I passed quite a few.

The fix: end subsidies for college. I don't care if you waste _your_ money on
a worthless degree, I only care if you waste _mine_.

~~~
anigbrowl
Are you saying that you consider the subsidy for your attendance at Rutgers
was a waste of taxpayer's money as well? Also, I'm not sure whether you passed
out idiot students who attended Rutgers by being smarter/working harder, or
that you have given idiots who learned very little a passing grade in the
classes you teach.

I don't necessarily disagree with you about ending subsidies, but it seems as
if you are trying to have your cake and eat it. Maybe I've misunderstood your
position. If they were abolished, would you expect college to get cheaper and
academics to tolerate a pay cut, or students to make up the shortfall by
borrowing higher sums?

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Are you saying that you consider the subsidy for your attendance at Rutgers
was a waste of taxpayer's money as well?_

It probably was. It's not as clear cut as the case of the waiter, but I don't
think my current work creates a benefit for the taxpayer as large as the
subsidy I received. When I was still an academic, I created a larger external
benefit [1], but it's far from clear that it was positive.

If subsidies were abolished, I expect college would become cheaper and more
efficient, most academics would find new employment, and most marginal
students would not attend college.

[1] Currently I work as a trader, and most of the benefits I provide are
captured by myself and my company. None of my academic research projects have
resulted in anything useful yet, though admittedly the jury is still out
(people are still exploring some of the lines of inquiry I created).

~~~
sesqu
What about your next job? As long as education is done at the start of one's
life, we can't look at its manifested usefulness for "young" people. You can
maybe make preliminary tallies at 45-50, at which point I would expect the
course of their life is better defined and the contribution of various periods
can start being evaluated.

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krschultz
This is horribly confusing "current job" with "lifetime earnings".

I took 2 months off last year to go skiing in Colorado with some of my friends
who were ski bums. One in particular was about 26, was a web developer with a
CS degree, and had been a ski bum for 3 years.

During that time he had been a janitor/house cleaner. Was that using his
degree? Obvously not. Did it pay the bills and allow him to ski every single
day while working in the late afternoon/evening? It sure did.

This year he moved back and is going to graduate school and consulting on the
side (why he cleaned toilets instead of consulting the whole time still
escapes me). He is back on his "real" career after taking that time to do what
he wanted to do with his life.

Honestly, I don't think it is a bad thing.

~~~
vinhboy
"why he cleaned toilets instead of consulting the whole time still escapes me"
-- either you've never done consulting, or never cleaned a toilet.

From experience, I can tell you I rather clean a toilet. =)

But alas, cleaning toilets can't pay my mortgage. =(

~~~
krschultz
Ha true. There were some perks of it, since he worked for the mountain he got
a free season pass which was about $500, and when your monthly expenses are
barely $500 that is signficant.

~~~
xyzzyb
If it was anything like the menial jobs I've taken, he was also part of a
fantastic culture of camaraderie.

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ojbyrne
"I have long been a proponent of Charles Murray’s thesis that an increasing
number of people attending college do not have the cognitive abilities or
other attributes usually necessary for success at higher levels of learning"

I'm not sure how that follows from the data. I'd be more likely to conclude
that the job market doesn't support the levels of college graduates being
produced.

~~~
sprout
Or that people don't get graduate degrees with the intent of maximizing their
earnings potential.

I've often heard it said that the fundamental problem with economics is that
it assumes people are rational and have good information. I'd say it goes
deeper than that: it assumes that money is the rational thing for a person to
maximize. In reality, money is something that bears some maximization, but
it's hardly the primary consideration.

~~~
achompas
Economics doesn't assume everyone wants to maximize money. It assumes everyone
wants to maximize _utility_ , and then uses money as a (poor) proxy for
utility. It's a subtle, important difference.

~~~
ghb
Serious question: what's utility?

~~~
achompas
Wikipedia calls it "relative satisfaction." I'd call it "personal benefit or
gain."

Considering that, it's clear why we'd use money as a proxy. Not a perfect one,
of course.

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hugh3
[citation needed]

Seriously, is there a central index of janitors somewhere listing their
highest level of educational achievement from which a precise number like 5057
can be read out? Did they interview twenty janitors, find one who claimed to
have a PhD, and extrapolate? Did they derive the number completely _ex anum_?
Because I'm finding it difficult to believe.

~~~
Alex3917
I haven't read the methodology for how the bureau of labor statistics gets its
data, but I'd be very surprised if it were significantly flawed. The federal
government is generally extremely competent at collecting social sciences data
like this. I'd actually say that it's one of the few things the government
does really well.

The big thing you need to watch out for is the media and other government
agencies spinning it. For example I always see MSM articles saying that 41% of
Americans have tried weed, despite the fact that it's closer to 85% of
Americans under age 55.[1] (And above that we don't have as good data.)

[1]
[http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/statistics/statistics_ar...](http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/statistics/statistics_article1.shtml)

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blahedo
This article, and many (not all) of the comments here, are really missing an
important point: that if you don't view a bachelor's degree as vocational
training, but rather as the education proper to any free person---i.e. the
liberal arts ideal---then you would expect a lot of people with at least
bachelor's degrees working in fields that don't, on surface, "require" them.

The idea of college (=university) students having a specialisation (a "major"
area of study) is not by any means a new one, but the idea that this tightly
corresponds to one's career and serves as a sort of vocational training
program, that's pretty new. Schooling of that nature used to be found
primarily in apprenticeships and vocational schools.

~~~
byrneseyeview
The problem many people have here is that college is heavily subsidized, and
those subsidies pretty much require us to get something for our money. I would
be very surprised if the government's policy was "we will lend up to $200K to
people with no assets and no prospects, which they can use to purchase art."
And yet when those people borrow similar sums of money to purchase, say, a BA
and MA in art history, it's fine.

That's a bad policy. If the university system didn't exist, and you tried to
pitch the current version to Congress, you'd be ridiculed.

~~~
abeppu
Can you clarify the 'heavily subsidized' part? I don't know a whole lot about
this area, but I was under the impression that relatively speaking, the US
higher education system was significantly _less_ subsidized than in many
comparably developed countries. And anecdotally, I'm sure we all know students
and families that struggle with tuition costs. Are the subsidies you're
talking about Pell grants? or tax breaks for funding education? People in this
conversation make is sound like getting a full ride from public funds is the
norm, but that seems really off.

~~~
smallblacksun
Public Universities (which usually have names like "University of Florida" or
"Idaho State University" are heavily subsidized by direct money from
(primarily) state governments. Many "private" universities also get
significant direct money from government. In addition, there are federally
(and state) funded scholarship programs that give money for school directly to
students, and student loans have their interest paid while the student is in
school by the federal government.

I don't know how it compares to other countries, but there is a lot of
government subsidization.

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kloncks
There's a ton of jobs that society deems as bad that are in fact not bad at
all. "Garbage men" in certain cities, for example, make quite a nice living.

I just think that sometimes we see "Janitor" and think that it's automatically
bad. Too often, we don't even scratch the surface or know the whole story.

And (honestly not joking), Good Will Hunting is a great movie.

~~~
zipdog
The dig at parking attendants is off the mark, I think Parking attendant is a
great job (if you angle it right and get a quiet parking lot, say, long term
by the airport).

You are free to read to your hearts content, and get paid to do so.

~~~
wyclif
I was an overnight security guard for 3 years at a Christian college.
Honestly, it was the easiest job I've ever had because there was never any
crime, the students were serious about school and very studious, and it was a
dry campus. It was easy for me to get overtime, which made the pay tolerable.

The first thing I did was make a reading list. I re-read most of the Western
Canon and a lot of other non-fiction books I wanted to read. The school also
had a computer lab with Macs and even a few Linux boxen, and during the winter
when I was snowed in I spent many nights learning PHP, Python, and MySQL. It
ended up being one of the most productive _learning_ periods of my life.

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charlief
What percentage of those janitors earned their degrees in the US? Are many of
them immigrants?

If you are calling out the US education system, the questions above have to be
answered.

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sigzero
This reminds me of the Garbage Man in the Dilbert comics for some reason.

~~~
ciupicri
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_smartest_garbageman>

------
csomar
As someone who switched from the "low educated" level to the "higher" one (and
I did that myself, not from Uni. or anything else, but just reading on the web
and opening my mind), I do value a lot Higher Education.

It improves quality. Wouldn't it be better if a waiter in Tunisia speaks
English well to improve the tourists experience.

The problem is that there is no university for waiters. It seems stupid, but
just think twice of it. If you provide them higher language education (how
they speak to customers, answer their questions) and formal practice (how they
should put the food, ask for payments...). This won't take 3 year, may be only
one, but would probably rise their salaries.

And so, the waiter, carpenter, bartender... salary increase. This follow up
with a high purchase power, more sales, better companies, higher salaries for
Engineers, doctors...

May be I'm wrong? I'm open for discussion about that.

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starkness
"[T]here are 5,057 janitors in the U.S. with Ph.D.’s, other doctorates, or
professional degrees."

Not clear what "professional" degrees they're referring to here, so doesn't
sound like it's just Ph.D.'s. (MBAs, JDs, MFAs, MPHs?)

~~~
gthank
Professional degrees are degrees that are designed to prepare you for a
specific profession. Those professions typically involve government
regulation, with said regulation commonly requiring the degree in question.
It's often used to indicate M.D. and J.D. degrees, although it also includes a
slew of others, e.g., nursing, accounting, education.

~~~
starkness
I'm aware of what they are (and in fact have one myself), but my point was
that they're distinct from Ph.D.'s (so the title is misleading), and they can
span across a broad spectrum of fields.

~~~
gthank
Sorry about the misunderstanding. At a guess, I'd say they mostly just mean
J.D. and M.D. degrees. Those are the ones most commonly lumped in with Ph.D.s,
probably due to the amount of time you need to spend getting them.

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jedwhite
His argument is a fallacy.

A parking lot attendant or janitor does not require even a high school
education. So does that mean we should stop investing in high school education
too?

There are always exceptional people outside the normal parameters.

But the higher the level of education in any social group the better off the
entire group will be in the long term, whatever the individual variations.

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nck4222
"there are 5,057 janitors in the U.S. with Ph.D.’s, other doctorates, or
professional degrees."

So, the titles wrong. Professional degree != Ph.D. right?

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robryan
I think there is a net positive effect on society of more people having decent
educations and committing to learn past the compulsory levels, even if these
skills aren't put to good use in a direct way with a job.

What would be their solution, you can't retroactively decide that certain
people shouldn't have attended college when down the track they either can't
or decide not to take up a job in their field.

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dbingham
This argument is circular, at least with respect to the Ph.Ds. The primary
field of employment for those with Ph.Ds is higher education. The deal is they
are paid by universities to teach students and do research. When there is less
funding for the university and less students to teach, there is also less
funding for research. And less money to hire Professors.

The fact that so many with Ph.Ds are underemployed is symptomatic of a lack of
funding for these institutions. Using that data to claim that it reveals that
these institutions are over funded reveals a lack of understanding of the
field in question.

Furthermore, the rest of the posted argument takes the data out of context.
The context is one of the worst economic downturns of the last hundred years.
With the highest unemployment and underemployment rates we've seen in a long
time.

Of course there are tons of people with college degrees working shit jobs. We
knew that already.

Finally, those who the author calls "higher education apologists" want higher
education to be a general thing not simply because it leads to more productive
citizens, but rather because of the value society as a whole receives when the
standard of education is higher. Especially with respect to our citizen's
duties toward our Democratic society.

"In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion
and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance." --Thomas
Jefferson

------
plesn
> my feeling that diminishing returns have set in to investments in higher
> education

That's seeing people only as a black box slave-like "workforce", giving them
"education" as well as food to sustain your busyness

> Now it is true that college has a consumption as well as investment
> function. People often enjoy going to classes [...]

It has many other functions too, for the human beeings beiing "educated". If
done well, it can even give them critical thought process, and knowledge about
certain topics of their environement. In eastern europe countries, the
aboundance of educated people in a beauraucratic regime which did not propose
so much interesting life openings contributed to its fall.

> [...] increasingly costly and unproductive forms of special pleading by a
> sector that abhors transparency and performance measures.

Just like the banking sector, the pharmaceutical sector, etc... Performance is
a word people often use meaning fittness to a metrics relevant to their
particular interests.

> Higher education is on the brink of big change, like it or not.

Which only means the balance of powers is changing. Care to ellaborate about
why and how ? Otherwise it is just saying : specialized labour is less needed
by US industry, so less people have to be trained. Ok, agreed (or not), so
let's give them education instead.

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jobobo
Higher education is useless without the job market to sustain it. Most people
don't spend 50k+ on a college degree to be better "educated". They do so in
anticipation of improving their lives, not making them worse. I have a BS in
Mathematics and Chemistry and neither of those degrees has improved my life,
only limited my jobs to those that require someone to have a degree and of
those, the pay is less than most waiters/waitresses make. The more you push
for everyone to attend higher education and the less jobs are created, then
you have a debt ridden "educated" soceity that can't afford to pay for their
student loans. Which then the government has to do something about, which
means all the tax payers have to pay for. So now we're all smart and poor.
Sounds like a bad plan to me.

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aidenn0
The problem is that for a lot of the jobs listed as "underemployment" the nash
equilibrium is that a significant percentage of these jobs will always have
bachelors degrees. If you can get a receptionist with a bachelors degree,
would you hire one that is right out of high-school?

~~~
krschultz
Yes, becuase the person with the bachelors degree is obviously going to leave
at the first oppurtunity and be unhappy about their salary and responsiblity
the entire time. Filling a position costs money so best to do it less often.

~~~
lsc
what if their bachelors is in fine art? My assistant has one of those, and I'm
a lot less worried about her leaving than my support guy who has no degree but
quite a lot of *NIX experience.

My point is that a degree does not necessarily impart more upwards mobility
than other kinds of less formal training.

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Semiapies
The well-known but thoroughly ignored issue in this article: college has
become all-but-a-necessity to get a decent job in the US because having only a
high school diploma doesn't even guarantee to an employer that one has basic
literacy or math skills.

------
Digital
It would be more useful to know how many people with a bachelor's degree are
under-employed against their will. A computer science graduate working as a
janitor because he can't find a job is a problem. If after his course work he
decides he wants to be a janitor, that's a different story.

What their majors were, and what college they were from would also be
informative as other replies noted.

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georgecmu
I wonder if these janitors are American-born or rather are immigrants without
work authorization or adequate language skills.

~~~
fbcocq
Me too. I know a lot of people with degrees in Law, Linguistics, Literature
(in their respective languages) and so on who moved to the US and now have
regular jobs because their degrees lose any meaning when changing the country.

You go to college to have options later, not to pursue a career, you know
little about at the age of 18, due to some misguided sense of loyalty to the
taxpayer.

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d4ft
Doesn't that 5,057 include "other professional degrees"? Further, are these
only from accredited schools? Both could greatly reduce the effect of this
particular statistic. That said, it is always disheartening to be reminded of
the poor folks who likely shelled out tons of money only to find there were no
jobs on the other end.

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adammichaelc
This analysis would be much more useful if (a) lifetime earnings were factored
in as a data point, and (b) schools were reported separately (a PhD from MIT
is a lot different from one from University of Phoenix, but the referenced
study seems to treat them as equal).

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yarapavan
This is surprising but the study quoted says it explicitly:

* In general, marginal and average returns to college are not the same...

* Some marginal expansions of schooling produce gains that are well below average returns, in general agreement with the analysis of Charles Murray

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aresant
I agree that higher education is on the brink of major change, but the author
presents that data in a vacuum.

How about:

\- What is the historical data set for higher-ed graduates aggregate? During
recession?

\- What fields of study are represented here? I would bet the data skews hard
to BAs vs. BS.

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jcfrei
Another aspect we have to consider is title inflation. It's no problem
nowadays to buy a BA, MA or even doctoral degrees - it dont know how and if
those fake degrees have been counted in the statistics.

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SemanticFog
Are these all graduates of US colleges? I can't find confirmation either way,
but it's worth keeping in mind that college degrees from many countries are
not comparable to US.

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dspeyer
I'd love to see this broken down by major, GPA, toughness-of-curriculum and
prestige-of-university. Assuming the claim isn't extrapolated from a single
janitor.

Not all degrees are equal.

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known
America has better <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility> then rest of
the world.

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TallGuyShort
A parking lot attendant is more likely to have a college degree than an
electrician? As if I needed more cynicism about my life.

~~~
hugh3
Makes sense. Electrician is a skilled job which requires a lot of training.
It's not the kind of thing you just fall into as a temporary stopgap when you
can't get real work with your B.A. in Medieval Basket-weaving.

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alexyoung
Wow, being a janitor sure has high education requirements in the US!

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83457
Please present proof of future employment with your application.

