I did my PhD in computational genetics. My current career has precisely nothing to do with genetics, which suits me just fine - but I was fortunate in ending up with having a choice between an academic career in a modern field, or a non-academic career in a modern field.
Most PhD students don't have that choice, and that does seem like something of a problem. Realistically, most of them aren't going to have the opportunity to enter a meaningful tenure-track program and stand a real chance of becoming a full professor. Pushing a bunch of people down that track without providing any support for the ones who aren't going to make it seems pretty unreasonable.
I'm not going to argue that that means we should dilute PhDs. I'm fine with the current degree remaining as it is. But we should stop encouraging people to do PhDs just because there's a chance that they're going to get into academia. I gained a lot from my degree, but I could have been taught that without the aspects that were tied to the assumption that I'd spend the rest of my life in academia. We should work out how to provide the more generally applicable aspects without making people feel like shit for doing that and then discovering that they don't an academic position to take up.
Who is pushing PhDs? The meme that there are far fewer academic jobs than PhDs has been widespread for at least 10 of 15 years.
A PhD is either a segue to a job in that field, if there is an industry (like pharmacology) or to launching a new segment of industry (as in computer technology) or a non-pecuniary pursuit of folks who are intelligent and financially independent.
This is factually wrong; universities are replacing tenured faculty with "cheaper labour" in the form of PhD holders from the excess glut. So, they are quite motivated to keep producing an "over-supply". The percentage of teaching staff that have tenure is a decreasing number over the pas ~30 years or so. Furthermore, the universities are getting comp'd on the tution of PhD students even though the students themselves don't pay fees. They do this indirectly through the "3 card monty" system of research grants, government subsidies, stipends & etc. Lastly but not leastly, the "prestige" of any political organization, hinges on the amount of resources and staff that come under the executive's aeigis. And so it is with departments at universities: large scale command of cash and IQ is a proxy for "power" and "verility" and all of the other stuff that people use to indirectly "measure themselves" against one another. After all, "prestige" is the measure of the modern university man...
You stated that the post you replied to was "factually wrong", and then proceeded on an entertaining diatribe against the post-secondary education system. I agree with many points you made, but you never clearly stated what was "factually wrong", or provided evidence to refute the falsehood.
On a proportionate basis, tenured faculty has declined significantly: from 46% to 22% in the USA since 1975.[1] So, what was traditionally a 50/50 shot at tenure, Now it is a 80/20 long-shot. At the margin, tenured track positions are actually even rarer. Recall, of the 22% most of them are not recent hires. So, you're odds may be as low as 9/10 against you getting a tenure job...assuming you got any "faculty job" at all. Since the latter is also decreasingly likely, given a supply glut/relatively, the odds of getting an academic job that is also a tenure job are lower yet.
One thing I can't understand is why are people not researching this kind of stuff beforehand? By the time you're doing a PhD you're in your mid to late 20's right? You should've been thinking about your marketable skills since you turned 20. You can't just do whatever you like and expect the world to throw jobs at you.
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I did my PhD in computational genetics. My current career has precisely nothing to do with genetics, which suits me just fine - but I was fortunate in ending up with having a choice between an academic career in a modern field, or a non-academic career in a modern field.
Most PhD students don't have that choice, and that does seem like something of a problem. Realistically, most of them aren't going to have the opportunity to enter a meaningful tenure-track program and stand a real chance of becoming a full professor. Pushing a bunch of people down that track without providing any support for the ones who aren't going to make it seems pretty unreasonable.
I'm not going to argue that that means we should dilute PhDs. I'm fine with the current degree remaining as it is. But we should stop encouraging people to do PhDs just because there's a chance that they're going to get into academia. I gained a lot from my degree, but I could have been taught that without the aspects that were tied to the assumption that I'd spend the rest of my life in academia. We should work out how to provide the more generally applicable aspects without making people feel like shit for doing that and then discovering that they don't an academic position to take up.
Who is pushing PhDs? The meme that there are far fewer academic jobs than PhDs has been widespread for at least 10 of 15 years.
A PhD is either a segue to a job in that field, if there is an industry (like pharmacology) or to launching a new segment of industry (as in computer technology) or a non-pecuniary pursuit of folks who are intelligent and financially independent.
This is factually wrong; universities are replacing tenured faculty with "cheaper labour" in the form of PhD holders from the excess glut. So, they are quite motivated to keep producing an "over-supply". The percentage of teaching staff that have tenure is a decreasing number over the pas ~30 years or so. Furthermore, the universities are getting comp'd on the tution of PhD students even though the students themselves don't pay fees. They do this indirectly through the "3 card monty" system of research grants, government subsidies, stipends & etc. Lastly but not leastly, the "prestige" of any political organization, hinges on the amount of resources and staff that come under the executive's aeigis. And so it is with departments at universities: large scale command of cash and IQ is a proxy for "power" and "verility" and all of the other stuff that people use to indirectly "measure themselves" against one another. After all, "prestige" is the measure of the modern university man...
see: figure 3, p7 http://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/2011-12Economic-Stat...
You stated that the post you replied to was "factually wrong", and then proceeded on an entertaining diatribe against the post-secondary education system. I agree with many points you made, but you never clearly stated what was "factually wrong", or provided evidence to refute the falsehood.
On a proportionate basis, tenured faculty has declined significantly: from 46% to 22% in the USA since 1975.[1] So, what was traditionally a 50/50 shot at tenure, Now it is a 80/20 long-shot. At the margin, tenured track positions are actually even rarer. Recall, of the 22% most of them are not recent hires. So, you're odds may be as low as 9/10 against you getting a tenure job...assuming you got any "faculty job" at all. Since the latter is also decreasingly likely, given a supply glut/relatively, the odds of getting an academic job that is also a tenure job are lower yet.
[1] This data is cited above.
50:50 would imply that 1 in 2 PhDs would get tenure; the odds were never that good.
One thing I can't understand is why are people not researching this kind of stuff beforehand? By the time you're doing a PhD you're in your mid to late 20's right? You should've been thinking about your marketable skills since you turned 20. You can't just do whatever you like and expect the world to throw jobs at you.
Please clarify the nefarious means by which PhD advisers are intentionally recruiting and training their underpaid replacements.
A "university" is not a single actor. PhD applicants generally apply to advisers or departments, not universities administrators.