True, but let's consider the next age group up from 17, ... graduate students earn less than that, don't get paid overtime, and will have to search for a new job in a few years.

That may be true but we're talking about an anecdote. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks that people with a high school education, on average, earn about half of what people with masters degrees earn [0]. It's easy to lose the big picture when focusing on an outlier.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-educatio...

What is a “professional degree”, between master’s and PhD?

That typically refers to a degree like a JD or MD.

Is an undergraduate in engineering a professional degree or an undergrad degree?

In the chart linked by mmcwilliams, an undergraduate degree in engineering would normally be a "Bachelor's Degree" - assuming the certificate awarded at the end says "bachelor of science" or something similar.

This varies a lot.

Some engineering programs make sure students are learning specialized practical skills, others make sure they get a solid grounding in basics so they have an easier time in picking whatever engineering discipline strikes their fancy.

There are pros and cons for both.

The differentiation here is usually that a professional degree follows a bachelors or undergrad degree. Law school and medical school are categorized differently than masters degree programs. In US colleges an engineering degree would typically be an MA and in some fields the MA is not a terminal degree.

> graduate students

Interesting comparison. You’re right. The primary difference I can think of is the training to quickly become an expert in a different topic.

I know plenty of PhD students accepting jobs in unrelated fields and quickly becoming the local expert in that topic.

While possible, it’s far more difficult for a machinist to suddenly become an expert car mechanic like this.

Were you ever a kid?

Kids (kid being someone from 16 to 30 without children of their own, ideally also without substance abuse problem and a home they can sleep in without fear of being assaulted) have nearly infinite energy, capacity to absorb (physical) abuse, and often the focus to learn esoteric subjects, if they're interested in the subject.

So I would fully expect a large fraction of bored kids to potentially become expert car mechanics, or tree pruners, algebraic geometers, hadoop experts, air conditioning duct builders, etc, if given access, mentorship, opportunity, recognition, and compensation.

I don’t disagree. After all, that’s exactly how I became an expert in whatever I do right now.

You seem to have missed my point though, it was about switching tracks to become an expert in a new thing. A random physics PhD grad might not have a burning passion for fintech, for example but still becomes an expert after three months in the job because of the sheer amount of rigorous training.

I think that the ability to learn adjacent skills (and I'd call fintech and physics PhD adjacent) is a function of domain expertise. For instance, if I were running an automotive body shop I'd put the expert hvac technician slightly ahead of the quant in the "how quickly they'll pick it up" and I'd put either ahead of the person who's never run down to the end of the "obsessive about a subject" maze. For lots and lots of kids, that "obsessive about a subject" focus comes naturally and often is beaten out of them by "please go back to your data entry task; we're not paying you to find weird buffer overruns while speed-running mario brothers 720"

...and because we decided to call "expert" any dev with 3 months of experience.

Now, how much of this is actual expertise and how much wealth extraction, I really don't know.

Honestly, this is a great way of putting it.

And let’s consider the next age group up from that with some graduate students easily clearing 150-200k in total comp. Short term pain for long term prosperity - studies related to me was that on average university graduates end up making $1M more than non graduates in lifetime earnings (of course misleading data since university admission is already selecting for something that correlates with ambition AND the professional world tended to prefer university students with opportunities)

Of course people pursuing higher education are often doing it for personal growth reasons as well.