That would be a perfectly sensible position if not for the fact that they kick you out of PhD school after you finish instead of promoting you.
Promote you? Why would you expect that? A PhD is not a meal-ticket. It's just an endorsement that says you are very good at undertaking novel and independent research. There is no promise made any point that an academic position or related industry position will be waiting for you at the end. As you say, it's just an apprenticeship. Nothing more. It's up to you to figure out what, if anything, you will do with that education once you receive it.
Because that's what happens when you spend five years in one job and spearhead a large project independently.
You've successfully proven my point: it's an apprenticeship. The problem is, apprenticeships are supposed to be followed by a career as a master practitioner of the craft you apprenticed in. If there are thousands of apprenticeships in science each year, and no permanent jobs as scientists, then the guild structure is unbalanced and the guild is responsible.
You are dodging the point: since the PhD system was started under the academic guild system, when it started, you did not do a PhD to "make your own way". You did a PhD to become a scientist and enter the (metaphorical but real) Guild of Scientists spread throughout academia and industry, with steady, salaried employment as a Guild member reasonably assured.
People who were planning to make their own way got bachelors degrees, people who planned to teach got Masters degrees, and people who planned to research got PhDs.
Now, you can of course keep repeating "make your own way, you dumb ignoramus who doesn't understand market imperatives!" until the cows come home, but all that means is that you consider market imperatives to override guild structure.
Which they have! But a descriptive statement about how the system has come to work is not a normative statement about how it should be made to function. Certainly I would say the guild structure is malfunctioning when job qualifications have gone from "produce one masterpiece (a PhD) over a few years and you can get a job" to "produce two to three masterpieces (a PhD and one or two post-docs) over a dozen years, and then you're considered just about qualified to apply for a permanent job".
By the way, we're certainly not talking about my personal plans, since at this point I simply don't anticipate any currently-known career structure actually lasting. Even if nothing revolutionary actually happens on the political, economic, or environmental fronts, the continued subjugation of all institutions and enterprises to short-term market imperatives (the ones you support ;-)) means that job tenures longer than a few years probably just won't ever be available to me. I'm living in a world built by people who think Thomas Friedman has the right idea.
EDIT: It's important to note that if we really believed in fully and entirely replacing the Guild of Science with a scientific labor market subject only to market imperatives, it would mean taking a lot of funding from the university/lab administrators and tenured PI's, and using it to create a less-strictly-pyramidal career structure more like the tech sector has: bachelor's degree, junior-level researcher for a number of years at full pay and benefits, senior researcher at full pay and benefits with real job security, management and leadership.
In a real market system, you don't get to work people to the bone for years at a time for hourly wages less than those at Wal-Mart solely on the promise that they will someday have the opportunity to gain a 1/3 chance at a real job in their field. In a real market system, that is called an unpaid internship, it's illegal, and it ends in your workers unionizing and suing you.
You do realize that the solution to the problem is to dramatically cut the supply of PhD students, right? While that's wonderfully self-serving for the students that do make the cutoff you would have to implement, it deprives many other people the opportunity to learn how to research and contribute knowledge to the community.
Why shouldn't someone be allowed to enroll in a PhD program if they want to conduct research in the field they are interested in?
So the net benefit to society is negative. Fewer students have a higher education, so people with research experience going into industry are reduced. The only people this benefits are the elite few getting into these tenure-track PhD student positions. Sounds pretty selfish to me.
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Promote you? Why would you expect that? A PhD is not a meal-ticket. It's just an endorsement that says you are very good at undertaking novel and independent research. There is no promise made any point that an academic position or related industry position will be waiting for you at the end. As you say, it's just an apprenticeship. Nothing more. It's up to you to figure out what, if anything, you will do with that education once you receive it.
Because that's what happens when you spend five years in one job and spearhead a large project independently.
You've successfully proven my point: it's an apprenticeship. The problem is, apprenticeships are supposed to be followed by a career as a master practitioner of the craft you apprenticed in. If there are thousands of apprenticeships in science each year, and no permanent jobs as scientists, then the guild structure is unbalanced and the guild is responsible.
So go be a master. Make your own way. A PhD is not a promise of a salaried future at an academic institution.
You are dodging the point: since the PhD system was started under the academic guild system, when it started, you did not do a PhD to "make your own way". You did a PhD to become a scientist and enter the (metaphorical but real) Guild of Scientists spread throughout academia and industry, with steady, salaried employment as a Guild member reasonably assured.
People who were planning to make their own way got bachelors degrees, people who planned to teach got Masters degrees, and people who planned to research got PhDs.
Now, you can of course keep repeating "make your own way, you dumb ignoramus who doesn't understand market imperatives!" until the cows come home, but all that means is that you consider market imperatives to override guild structure.
Which they have! But a descriptive statement about how the system has come to work is not a normative statement about how it should be made to function. Certainly I would say the guild structure is malfunctioning when job qualifications have gone from "produce one masterpiece (a PhD) over a few years and you can get a job" to "produce two to three masterpieces (a PhD and one or two post-docs) over a dozen years, and then you're considered just about qualified to apply for a permanent job".
By the way, we're certainly not talking about my personal plans, since at this point I simply don't anticipate any currently-known career structure actually lasting. Even if nothing revolutionary actually happens on the political, economic, or environmental fronts, the continued subjugation of all institutions and enterprises to short-term market imperatives (the ones you support ;-)) means that job tenures longer than a few years probably just won't ever be available to me. I'm living in a world built by people who think Thomas Friedman has the right idea.
EDIT: It's important to note that if we really believed in fully and entirely replacing the Guild of Science with a scientific labor market subject only to market imperatives, it would mean taking a lot of funding from the university/lab administrators and tenured PI's, and using it to create a less-strictly-pyramidal career structure more like the tech sector has: bachelor's degree, junior-level researcher for a number of years at full pay and benefits, senior researcher at full pay and benefits with real job security, management and leadership.
In a real market system, you don't get to work people to the bone for years at a time for hourly wages less than those at Wal-Mart solely on the promise that they will someday have the opportunity to gain a 1/3 chance at a real job in their field. In a real market system, that is called an unpaid internship, it's illegal, and it ends in your workers unionizing and suing you.
You do realize that the solution to the problem is to dramatically cut the supply of PhD students, right? While that's wonderfully self-serving for the students that do make the cutoff you would have to implement, it deprives many other people the opportunity to learn how to research and contribute knowledge to the community.
Why shouldn't someone be allowed to enroll in a PhD program if they want to conduct research in the field they are interested in?
At the same time as dramatically expanding the number of higher-level positions, yes. The pyramid must be made into an ordinary tower.
Too bad, so sad.
So the net benefit to society is negative. Fewer students have a higher education, so people with research experience going into industry are reduced. The only people this benefits are the elite few getting into these tenure-track PhD student positions. Sounds pretty selfish to me.