What You Can Do With a PhD in Theology

In the comments of R.R. Reno’s recent article on the best graduate theology programs , several readers are discussing the possibilities of finding work once the degree is completed. The Chronicle of Higher Education has the answer: you can become a janitor .

Putting issues of student abilities aside, the growing disconnect between labor market realities and the propaganda of higher-education apologists is causing more and more people to graduate and take menial jobs or no job at all. This is even true at the doctoral and professional level—there are 5,057 janitors in the U.S. with Ph.D.’s, other doctorates, or professional degrees.

The article also notes that:

Over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (over 8,000 of them have doctoral or professional degrees), along with over 80,000 bartenders, and over 18,000 parking lot attendants . All told, some 17,000,000 Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that the BLS says require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree. [emphasis in original]

I suspect a lot of those people, though, are preparing for graduate study. Once they get their PhD they’ll be able to get a job as . . . oh, um, never mind.

(Although it should go without saying, I’ll say it anyway: There is nothing wrong with being a janitor, a waitress, or any other God-honoring, people serving work. But obviously your prospects of making a good living with such a job are significantly reduced if you’re saddled with a student loan debt from grad school.)