ALTERNET– For politicians, boosting college graduation rates has always been a fairly uncontroversial goal to support. The Obama administration is doing so, rather relentlessly, through a number of initiatives designed to better prepare students for college and support them once they get there.

The assumptions are 1) that students who graduate from college have increased potential for economic mobility, and 2) the more students who earn college degrees, the more our economy will grow. But are either of those assumptions still true, in light of our new economic reality? Or are we wasting money investing in a sector that’s producing thousands of janitors with Ph.D.s?

One thing’s for sure: our higher education system has produced thousands of janitors with Ph.D.s or other professional degrees — about 5,057 of them, in fact, plus more than 8,000 waiters and waitresses. When you look at all college degrees, there are more than 317,000 over-educated Americans serving us our meals, more than 80,000 shaking our martinis and some 62,000 mowing our lawns.

In all, about 17 million people in this country have completed college only to end up working jobs that require a skill level below that of a bachelors degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics  

You can be sure that many college-educated McDonald’s workers have career goals that they’ve been unable to achieve because of the nation’s crippling 22.5% underemployment rate; some of them will, theoretically (and hopefully), move into their intended career one day. But what of the millions of people who don’t switch over to careers that require a degree, either by choice or because of circumstance?

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