Over 5,000 Ph.D. graduates work as janitors – Why?

http://whenyouputitthatway.com/phd-graduates-working-as-janitors/

by nreece • 12 years ago

34 47 12 years ago

pjaun• 12 years ago

I know one who does it because he is an alcoholic and a pedophile. Point being, having a Ph.D. doesn't mean you can't screw up your life in a variety of ways that limit your career options.

mathattack• 12 years ago

The point of the article is many of these folks actually want to be janitors. They have no debt and want a job that pays for 8 hours, but requires only 2 or 3 of actual work.

zacinbusiness3• 12 years ago

I have a masters degree in English and earn an average of $3k a month, putting me on the low-end of the income spectrum. But I also work about...15-20 hours a week, from home, and take regular naps and generally just screw around a lot of the time. It's not the same as being a janitor, but it's similar in that there's very little oversight and the work isn't really too bad. So I can really understand the FU mindset, especially as I've worked B.S. jobs where the manager is an idiot and where the work isn't important but the boss acts like you're holding the keys to the nukes or something. I think a lot of the guys that go into super science aren't really looking for huge pay checks anyway. They love the science and the challenge, and they don't want to be burdened with all the BS that comes with dealing with "regular people" because we will get in their way. So I can respect that sort of decision.

michaelochurch3• 12 years ago

I've worked B.S. jobs where the manager is an idiot and where the work isn't important but the boss acts like you're holding the keys to the nukes or something.

http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/fourth-quadra...

I think a lot of the guys that go into super science aren't really looking for huge pay checks anyway. They love the science and the challenge, and they don't want to be burdened with all the BS that comes with dealing with "regular people" because we will get in their way.

It ain't greener on the other side of the fence. Most software engineers work on pointless shit (and complain about idiotic or short-sighted management) as well.

The problem isn't that these product executives and bikeshedding non-techs have low IQs. (We viciously lambast them as "retards" and "morons", but it ain't true. If they were physically limited we'd be dickheads for judging them. It's the willful stupidity that's the sin.) They're more than smart enough. The problem is that they (and half or more of all developers, to tell the truth) are willingly intellectually half-assed. Once they get power it's an excuse not to think. They do become genuinely stupid (in the low IQ sense) over time but that atrophy takes decades.

In other words, it's not that "regular" people are the idiots who make our lives hell. It's something to do with power structures and the anti-intellectualism those seem to breed, even when filled with smart people.

zacinbusiness3• 12 years ago

I agree with your points whole heartedly. But when I say "bs" jobs I mean working 7pm to 7am at the gas station where prostitutes will offer to blow you for a cup of ice cream. And the manager acts like its a sign of the end times that you didn't wear your name badge or that you didn't shave.

27182818284• 12 years ago

Something I feel this article misses is the market outside of the coasts of the US. If you are one of those PhDs who isn't actively seeking to be a janitor for the relaxation involved, and you're struggling for work, please look at the Midwest or so-called No Coast.

There are tons of well-paying jobs in the Midwest for talented people. Salaries are lower than a standard San Francisco job, but the quality of life is so much higher here it makes up for it. The multi-million dollar homes of Oakland and San Francisco can be yours here on a single person's salary working about 40 hours a week. (Admittedly winters here are worse, but if you do have to drive somewhere, wow you had to pay $5 or $9 for the whole day of parking in a garage 50ft from your door.) http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2014/03/it-manager-full-st...

bane• 12 years ago

If anybody wants to do a little virtual house hunting for no-coast housing, I highly recommend the show "House Hunters" (the International version "House Hunters International" is also great) on HGTV. They also have some similar companion shows like Property Virgins, Hawaii Life, "Buying and Selling" and "Property Borthers" and it's pretty informative as to what local markets are like all over the place.

The format is basically the same every show, somebody wants to move someplace, in 30 minutes they give a brief description of what they're looking for and their budget to a real estate agent. The agent then shows them 3 homes in the area. They pick one of the homes and then finally you see how they've moved in and decorated the place 2 or 3 months later. Along the way you get to see a little bit of the area they're looking in.

The other shows have similar, but slightly different formats or spins on the basic concept. But House Hunters has the show format down to a concise science.

There are episodes where my jaw absolutely drops to the floor seeing how much house and property they can get for their money. For what my garage costs I've seen people get 2 floor 2500 sq ft homes with a detached garage structure and half an acre.

Of course other places are equally depressing and have pretty much destroyed life-long dreams to move to a nicer climate for retirement. However, House Hunters International has shown me some new candidates that look like they'd work very well on a retirement income.

http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv40/videos/index.html?xp=hh

michaelochurch3• 12 years ago

I'm a fan of the Midwest in general and love the seasons (even in MN) but I don't know that the jobs are there. My friend in Madison (a very intelligent "ABD" who, as often happens in math PhD programs, burned out) got $45,000 in his first programming job because his company had no competition. Even now, I doubt he's higher than $90,000.

As for leaving SF/Boston/NYC, I moved to Baltimore, which is not the Midwest and actually not that cheap. The two-body problem is a big part of why the "star cities" are so attractive. I like Baltimore-- it's way better than its reputation, although that ain't saying much-- but when I next search for a job, I'll probably find more outside of Baltimore than inside. Also, there's that two-body issue. This move has been good for my career but so-so for my wife's, because there aren't many good companies here. We shouldn't have to choose between one career or the other and, in the long run, we won't. The costs of housing in San Francisco and New York are fucking criminal (literally, if you look into the NIMBY issues) but knowing that both you and your spouse will be able to find high-quality jobs for 10+ years is the draw. I'd rather live in Minneapolis than San Francisco, but I'm pretty sure we could live in San Francisco, career-wise, for at least a decade. Are there going to be VP-level-but-mostly-coding machine learning positions in Minneapolis in 2024? Not a clear call. And cross-country moves are stressful and just get harder with age.

Of course, San Francisco and New York spit you out if you don't become, at least in pay grade, Director-level by child-raising age. To be honest, I don't think we'll move to either of those cities when we next relocate, because even though we'll be able to afford it the expensiveness is horrible for the culture. We ranked cities independently and Seattle topped both of our lists; it's affordable (if not exactly cheap) and beautiful and neither of us has a problem with 50-degree cloudy days. (In MN that was called "Early May".)

seanmcdirmid4• 12 years ago

I thought the correct acronym was ABCD?

Besides the weather, two body problems are one reason why the mid-west is unappealing, but also your earnings generally scale with living expenses, meaning you have more disposable income to spend on things whose price is fixed across the country.

Seattle is my first choice for when I finally move back to the states, but I grew up in the area. You have to be OK with 3 or 4 months of rain, however.

michaelochurch3• 12 years ago

First, beyond about a 145 IQ (I'll side-step, for now, the difficulties of measuring beyond 140; note that I'm talking about the underlying "g" rather than test scores themselves) typical work boredom becomes a crippling, anxiety-inducing disability but, because few people can or want to sympathize with that problem, it often gets misconstrued as an attitude issue. After a few years of professional failure, a lot of those people go into blue-collar work where their bodies are worked but their minds are free.

Second, while IQ and mental illness actually don't correlate, creativity (which is very helpful for getting a PhD in many fields) is correlated with mental health issues.

dil8• 12 years ago

Second, while IQ and mental illness actually don't correlate, creativity (which is very helpful for getting a PhD in many fields) is correlated with mental health issues.

Do you have any sources for this? I would like to read the some of the studies.

bokonist• 12 years ago

typical work boredom becomes a crippling, anxiety-inducing disability

There is a secret for overcoming this boredom: podcasts. Ticket-munching isn't actually that bad if you have a bunch of queued up podcasts and audiobooks that you can listen to. I recommend bloggingheads.tv, C-Span AfterWords, C-Span Q&A, and if you like sports, the B.S. Report. Though if you listen to podcasts, you must be quick to pause when your work actually requires all 145+ IQ points, otherwise quality will suffer.

dm22• 12 years ago

I don't see how they can group electricians in the same category as front desk clerks and parking lot attendants.

What are the disciplines of the PhD graduates? Were any of them earned online or at an unaccredited university? These are important pieces of the puzzle.

There are 2 - 3 million people with doctorates in the US. I don't think it's unreasonable to have a small percentage of that number in a low-paying job because of whatever reasons they have (mental illness, committed crime, not good in field, did something unethical in field.

With a few exceptions, if you have a PhD and the desire and ability to work, it's not difficult to find a job.

doktrin3• 12 years ago

I don't see how they can group electricians in the same category as front desk clerks and parking lot attendants.

Yeah, I wasn't sure if I had mis-read that statement. It makes absolutely no sense. Financially, many electricians make more than I do (software engineer working in research).

Money aside, I'm pretty sure I could find electrical work stimulating and fulfilling. The same is most certainly not true of low level customer service.

cheald2• 12 years ago

Well, those who find electrical work stimulating usually aren't very good at it.

aortega• 12 years ago

3 million PhDs?? you have like the population of Finland in PhDs? that's crazy!

joeyo• 12 years ago

Yes, but the population of the US is something like 310 million.

pistle• 12 years ago

Brilliance is great for party tricks, but requires a whole set of other personality traits and social conditions to be valuable to the individual or the society.

samiheinross• 12 years ago

This article doesn't seem right to me. At least 90% of my friends studying Ph.D. only because they couldn't find a decent job. They just postponed their misery for five years living with the grant they get every month for researching.

crazy1van• 12 years ago

Getting paid more in a job is about providing more value to your employer.

Getting an advanced degree is about test taking, writing papers, and research.

They are not necessarily correlated. This is akin to wondering why excelling at juggling doesn't make you more money in a programming job. Juggling just doesn't add more value to that particular job.

tn132• 12 years ago

A lot of times it is just "paying fees".

pavanred• 12 years ago

I must agree, I am a Computer Science graduate student and one thing I have noticed is that the only courses that always run out of registrations within a minute (literally) of registration open are the ones in which the Professor is known to hand out A grades to almost everyone who takes up his course. Needless to say many students graduate with high GPA scores. At least in this case, its just "paying fees".

tn132• 12 years ago

"College Degree" is a meaningless phrase. I run a business which employs engineers, electricians, mechanical hardware designers as well as technical writes and so on. Now, if any of those hotel front desk staff or Janitors had any monetizable skill I would hired them for a price higher than that of Janitor but less what what I have been paying to my current employers and thus increase my profits.

A lot of those hotel front desk staff and janitors simply wasted their money on college degrees and the so called Phds. They should have taken a bit more realistic education.

hawkharris• 12 years ago

the average Ph.D. is smarter...than their friend with a bachelor’s degree.

This raises an interesting question: what is intelligence? A cursory Google search shows there's no solid consensus in academia. Having said that, there was a symposium years ago (1921) in which thirteen leading psychologists proposed definitions. [0] Here are a few of them:

1. the tendency to take and maintain a direction

2. judgment, otherwise called good sense, practical sense, initiative

3. adjustment or adaptation to the environment. . .

4. global capacity to act purposefully, think rationally, and deal effectively. . .

5. the ability to plan and structure behavior. . .

6. the ability to solve genuine problems or difficulties. . .

While Ph.D. students have an impressive amount of specialized knowledge, they don't seem to meet all of these criteria for intelligence. Some Ph.D. students are spending hundreds of thousands on degrees without having a clear career plan, then struggling to lead successful, productive lives once they graduate.

This seems opposite in some ways to the qualities of practical sense, judgement and planning ability that characterize intelligence.

[0] http://www.unc.edu/~rooney/iq.htm

rdl• 12 years ago

It's mostly that the lower bound to get a PhD (at least in a non-imaginary field) is higher than to merely get an SB. If you assume a non-pessimal distribution[1], the average pHD will be smarter than the average SB.

[1] This isn't necessarily true of the smartest individuals, and you could imagine a distribution where the 120-130 IQ people stick around to get PhDs, but the SB people are 115-160 IQ, and they leave to go into other fields. Probably true of English, Political Science, etc. -- the smartest people of those undergrad programs probably go into law or finance rather than remaining as grad students and professors within the field itself.

michaelq2• 12 years ago

About 50,000 PhDs are minted each year in the US. Assuming a working life of 40 years, that means there are about 2 million PhDs in the domestic labor market.

Now take into account that:

1) For profit universities like University of Phoenix also issue PhDs. Most employers don't take them seriously, but USBLS measures them just the same.

2) We're in the midst of the worst job market in generations, and it may quickly become the worst job market since industrialization.

Given these circumstances, having 5,000 people, or about 0.25% of the PhD-holding labor force, working as janitors does not sound like a particularly significant datum for making broader assumptions about the value of the PhD.

pbnjay• 12 years ago

I think the problem has more to do with students' motivation than the PhD itself. In fact most of the grad students I've talked to in various stages have no real plan for AFTER completing the degree. So they in turn have no motivation for actually understanding the subject they've picked, and no thought process for selecting a research project. They pick the easy topics (or let their advisor pick for them) and don't attempt to study or understand the stuff that will get them noticed or get them a job.

The whole point of the PhD is (supposed to be) preparing you for academic work - it's a demonstration that you can do novel, creative, and independent research at a level of your peers. It's not just proof you completed the checklist like a BS. The problem is that many universities have turned it into that.

The flipside of all this is that it's pretty easy to tell in an interview who just "did the PhD thing" without any plan for what happens next. If you ask me, that's what's going on here. The people who were aimless to begin with are still aimless.

Source: I'm a recent PhD graduate, and work in an hybrid academic setting interacting with current MS/PhD students.

marincounty• 12 years ago

I'm not going to get Into the pile in hire and deeper, but honestly want is wrong with making a living as a Janitor. I have never understood the reason we identify ourselves by he we make our money? When I was looking for Skanks, and the "One", the one question that literally that was really irritating was,"What do you do??" I done many things in life, but I never once felt any need to internalize my job, career as wham I am as a person. I feel our need to ask "What to you do?" And have the person on the other end judging it is left over from the evolutionary mating ritual. Hear me out--girl wants a fast way of determining who will take care if her and baby--what better question? The question is usually a lie, along with how much said question elicits, but it is asked. When people ask am me why I do; my latest answer is a "recovering porn addict, alcoholic, and drug user. Oh, yea I'm a Animal rights activist, and spokesperson for the use of birth control". When I find a person who actually get's it I would slave away at any job in order to satisfy her consumerism, and need for a big cave. As to being a Janitor, I get it. It's solitary. You can think. In college, I always worked as a security guard, or mini storage manager; I didn't have to deal with anyone, and I could concentrate on what I was really interested in. (I looked for jobs where I knew I would be watching a building, or something other than people. And, mini storages are always 95% full. You can sit and read and code for eight hours). Good luck people, I hope judging people on what they do evolves into extinction. And please, when asked this rediculios question--try to verbally instruct the person on their shallow intellect.

gregpilling• 12 years ago

I hated that question when I was dating also. I usually answered "many things". I also do not think my work defines me.

It also brings to mind the movie "Sabrina" with Audrey Hepburn, who father in the movie was a chauffeur so that he could spend his days reading books while between driving stints.

frozenport• 12 years ago

What if you got a PhD from Bulgaria in literature, left for the USA in 1991, and are 60 years old?

Are you in the same category as a well connected graduate from a top computer science program.

The lack of analysis and generalizations make this article meaningless. If your title is a question, give me a damn answer.

Over 5,000 Ph.D. graduates work as janitors – Why?

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