Too many PhDs?

Kevin Drum asks “Do we mint too many PhDs?” His answer is in the link below, which links to other links that link to other links.

Unlike Drum, I have a PhD. So did both my parents and so does my wife and younger brother. I’ve mentored seven PhD students and served on the dissertation committees of over 35 PhD students, both US and international. Needless to say, I have an opinion on this.

My answer is “no.” The PhD degree, despite the designation “Doctor of Philosophy,” is awarded based on the demonstrated ability of the graduate to contribute significant new knowledge in their discipline. But at its best, the PhD means that the holder has mastered a level of critical and analytical thinking that can be applied to a wide variety of tasks.

If the question were “Do we mint too many PhDs for the academic tenure track market, then the answer is yes. Even STEM PhDs have less than a 25% chance of landing a tenure track university job (and not all of them will get tenure). As for humanity PhDs, in his book “The Graduate School Mess,” Leonard Cassuto described the practice of training humanity PhDs for nonexistent academic jobs as “minting expired passports.”

But the reality is that PhD unemployment rates hover around 1%. There are jobs for PhDs in pharma, investment companies, patent law, product development and the military, to cite just a few examples. Just like the JD degree.

Now not everyone who has a PhD is working at a job that requires that level of training. Unfortunately, in many STEM fields, PhDs are doing jobs that could be done by a person with a masters degree, but the masters isn’t respected as much as it used to be.

In the end, what we need is better job counseling. Students pursuing the PhD need to understand the opportunity cost of staying out of the job market for 5-10 years, and question whether they’ll get the salary that will compensate for that opportunity cost. Students need to be shown examples of success beyond becoming their mentor’s “mini-me.” In addition to being exploited as research cannon-fodder, they need to be trained to be adaptable, entrepreneurial and ecumenical in considering career paths. https://jabberwocking.com/quote-of-the-day-do-we-mint-too-many-phds/