Most of us don’t have PhDs, so maybe
this tidbit is of limited interest, but….
There aren’t enough jobs in academia or
the business world for all of the folks who succeed in getting their doctorates
each year—not by a long shot.
A recent story on NYTimes.com says:
“The lure of a tenured job in academia
is great — it means a secure, prestigious position directing a lab that does
cutting-edge experiments, often carried out by underlings. Yet although many
yearn for such jobs, fewer than half of those who earn science or engineering
doctorates end up in the sort of academic positions that directly use what they
were trained for."
In biomedicine, fewer than 1 out of 6
grads with the “Philosophiae Doctor” degree can get one of those tenure-track
jobs.
I’m no fan of academic tenure, or
tenure of any other stripe. I think it’s nuts to guarantee lifetime employment
to anyone, be she a smart prof or a Supreme Court justice or anyone else.
It’s too easy to say that anybody who
wants a doctorate should be free to get one. Most of those pre-doc students are
being subsidized by their colleges or someone else (including taxpayers).
Of course, I know that many of those students graduate with a bundle of college loans, but
nevertheless, we—individually and collectively—are paying for too many folks to
get an expensive education that has way less than the presumed payoff for the
PhDs and the rest of our society.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
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