"A barista earns more?"

Apparently it no longer "pays" to go to university and get a bachelor's degree. You can earn more being a barista.

I am not sure what it is about coffee. I will drink it but it has to be quite weak and it needs milk (but no sugar please!) I do not understand these people who "need" their coffee, who go and buy it each morning. It puzzles me that people "need" it so much they feel they cannot fully function without it.

Perhaps though this "need" is so great they are prepared to pay for others to prepare it for them. All they then need to do it is drink it.  

Is all this why we are apparently prepared to pay the people who prepare it more than others to do other jobs, often very responsible jobs?  Is coffee really that important?

According to an article I have just read a barista in this city can earn as much as a vet. Now a vet has been to university for some years. They have worked hard to get the degree. Unless the bank of "Mum and Dad" paid for it upfront they have a student loan to pay back - a loan which is linked to inflation. The vet has the responsibility for the health and welfare of living things who can feel pain, who are often important and much loved members of a family. We tend to view a visit to the vet as expensive, in the same way as we view a visit to the doctor as expensive. 

Perhaps it is expensive but isn't the coffee, coffee we could make for ourselves, also expensive? 

There were other jobs mentioned in the article and nothing was said about the low incomes of general practitioners in the medical profession or the low incomes of teachers working sixty or more hours a week. Surely these things are needed just as much as coffee.

I know a recently retired bricklayer who was earning twice what his doctor was earning. Yes, it was hard physical labour but he went home at night without forms to fill in and professional qualifications to maintain. He can retire very comfortably at the age of sixty-three and, hopefully, enjoy a long retirement. His doctor will probably go on working into her seventies.

Yes, part of the problem is that we have too many people going to university. If the essays I see are any example, then standards are lower. A "bachelor's degree" does not mean what it once meant. Does it also mean that some likely areas of employment are less well regarded than that of someone who pours liquid into a cup or glass and passes it over the counter?