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发帖数: 1187 | 1 The disposable academic
Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time
ON THE evening before All Saints’ Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95
theses
to the door of a church in Wittenberg. In those days a thesis was simply
a position one wanted to argue. Luther, an Augustinian friar, asserted that
Christians could not buy their way to heaven. Today a doctoral thesis is
both an idea and an account of a period of original research. Writing one
is the aim of the hundreds of thousands of students who embark on a
doctorate
of philosophy (PhD) every year.
In most countries a PhD is a basic requirement for a career in academia.
It is an introduction to the world of independent research—a kind of
intellectual
masterpiece, created by an apprentice in close collaboration with a
supervisor
. The requirements to complete one vary enormously between countries,
universities
and even subjects. Some students will first have to spend two years working
on a master’s degree or diploma. Some will receive a stipend; others will
pay their own way. Some PhDs involve only research, some require classes
and examinations and some require the student to teach undergraduates. A
thesis can be dozens of pages in mathematics, or many hundreds in history
. As a result, newly minted PhDs can be as young as their early 20s or world
-weary forty-somethings.
One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some describe
their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay
and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student
, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and
you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle. “It isn’t graduate school
itself that is discouraging,” says one student, who confesses to rather
enjoying the hunt for free pizza. “What’s discouraging is realising the
end point has been yanked out of reach.”
Whining PhD students are nothing new, but there seem to be genuine problems
with the system that produces research doctorates (the practical “
professional
doctorates” in fields such as law, business and medicine have a more
obvious
value). There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed
as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated
to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about
shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right
things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or
pyramid
schemes.
Rich pickings
For most of history even a first degree at a university was the privilege
of a rich few, and many academic staff did not hold doctorates. But as
higher
education expanded after the second world war, so did the expectation that
lecturers would hold advanced degrees. American universities geared up
first
university
students and half of its science and technology PhDs (at that time it had
only 6% of the global population). Since then America’s annual output of
PhDs has doubled, to 64,000.
Other countries are catching up. Between 1998 and 2006 the number of
doctorates
handed out in all OECD countries grew by 40%, compared with 22% for America
. PhD production sped up most dramatically in Mexico, Portugal, Italy and
Slovakia. Even Japan, where the number of young people is shrinking,
churned
out about 46% more PhDs. Part of that growth reflects the expansion of
university
education outside America. Richard Freeman, a labour economist at Harvard
University, says that by 2006 America was enrolling just 12% of the world
’s students.
But universities have discovered that PhD students are cheap, highly
motivated
and disposable labour. With more PhD students they can do more research,
and in some countries more teaching, with less money. A graduate assistant
at Yale might earn $20,000 a year for nine months of teaching. The average
pay of full professors in America was $109,000 in 2009—higher than the
average for judges and magistrates.
Indeed, the production of PhDs has far outstripped demand for university
lecturers. In a recent book, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, an academic
and a journalist, report that America produced more than 100,000 doctoral
degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000
new professorships. Using PhD students to do much of the undergraduate
teaching
cuts the number of full-time jobs. Even in Canada, where the output of PhD
graduates has grown relatively modestly, universities conferred 4,800
doctorate
degrees in 2007 but hired just 2,616 new full-time professors. Only a few
fast-developing countries, such as Brazil and China, now seem short of PhDs
.
A short course in supply and demand
In research the story is similar. PhD students and contract staff known as
“postdocs”, described by one student as “the ugly underbelly of academia
”, do much of the research these days. There is a glut of postdocs too.
Dr Freeman concluded from pre-2000 data that if American faculty jobs in
the life sciences were increasing at 5% a year, just 20% of students would
land one. In Canada 80% of postdocs earn $38,600 or less per year before
tax—the average salary of a construction worker. The rise of the postdoc
has created another obstacle on the way to an academic post. In some areas
five years as a postdoc is now a prerequisite for landing a secure full-
time job.
These armies of low-paid PhD researchers and postdocs boost universities’
, and therefore countries’, research capacity. Yet that is not always a
good thing. Brilliant, well-trained minds can go to waste when fashions
change
. The post-Sputnik era drove the rapid growth in PhD physicists that came
to an abrupt halt as the Vietnam war drained the science budget. Brian
Schwartz
, a professor of physics at the City University of New York, says that in
the 1970s as many as 5,000 physicists had to find jobs in other areas.
In America the rise of PhD teachers’ unions reflects the breakdown of an
implicit contract between universities and PhD students: crummy pay now
for a good academic job later. Student teachers in public universities such
as the University of Wisconsin-Madison formed unions as early as the 1960s
, but the pace of unionisation has increased recently. Unions are now
spreading
to private universities; though Yale and Cornell, where university
administrators
and some faculty argue that PhD students who teach are not workers but
apprentices
, have resisted union drives. In 2002 New York University was the first
private
university to recognise a PhD teachers’ union, but stopped negotiating
with it three years later.
In some countries, such as Britain and America, poor pay and job prospects
are reflected in the number of foreign-born PhD students. Dr Freeman
estimates
that in 1966 only 23% of science and engineering PhDs in America were
awarded
to students born outside the country. By 2006 that proportion had increased
to 48%. Foreign students tend to tolerate poorer working conditions, and
the supply of cheap, brilliant, foreign labour also keeps wages down.
A PhD may offer no financial benefit over a master’s degree. It can even
reduce earnings
Proponents of the PhD argue that it is worthwhile even if it does not lead
to permanent academic employment. Not every student embarks on a PhD
wanting
a university career and many move successfully into private-sector jobs
in, for instance, industrial research. That is true; but drop-out rates
suggest
that many students become dispirited. In America only 57% of doctoral
students
will have a PhD ten years after their first date of enrolment. In the
humanities
, where most students pay for their own PhDs, the figure is 49%. Worse still
, whereas in other subject areas students tend to jump ship in the early
years, in the humanities they cling like limpets before eventually falling
off. And these students started out as the academic cream of the nation.
Research at one American university found that those who finish are no
cleverer
than those who do not. Poor supervision, bad job prospects or lack of money
cause them to run out of steam.
Even graduates who find work outside universities may not fare all that well
. PhD courses are so specialised that university careers offices struggle
to assist graduates looking for jobs, and supervisors tend to have little
interest in students who are leaving academia. One OECD study shows that
five years after receiving their degrees, more than 60% of PhDs in Slovakia
and more than 45% in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany and Spain were
still on temporary contracts. Many were postdocs. About one-third of
Austria
’s PhD graduates take jobs unrelated to their degrees. In Germany 13% of
all PhD graduates end up in lowly occupations. In the Netherlands the
proportion
is 21%.
A very slim premium
PhD graduates do at least earn more than those with a bachelor’s degree.
A study in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management by Bernard
Casey shows that British men with a bachelor’s degree earn 14% more than
those who could have gone to university but chose not to. The earnings
premium
for a PhD is 26%. But the premium for a master’s degree, which can be
accomplished
in as little as one year, is almost as high, at 23%. In some subjects the
premium for a PhD vanishes entirely. PhDs in maths and computing, social
sciences and languages earn no more than those with master’s degrees. The
premium for a PhD is actually smaller than for a master’s degree in
engineering
and technology, architecture and education. Only in medicine, other
sciences
, and business and financial studies is it high enough to be worthwhile.
Over all subjects, a PhD commands only a 3% premium over a master’s degree
.
Dr Schwartz, the New York physicist, says the skills learned in the course
of a PhD can be readily acquired through much shorter courses. Thirty years
ago, he says, Wall Street firms realised that some physicists could work
out differential equations and recruited them to become “quants”,
analysts
and traders. Today several short courses offer the advanced maths useful
for finance. “A PhD physicist with one course on differential equations
is not competitive,” says Dr Schwartz.
Many students say they are pursuing their subject out of love, and that
education
is an end in itself. Some give little thought to where the qualification
might lead. In one study of British PhD graduates, about a third admitted
that they were doing their doctorate partly to go on being a student, or
put off job hunting. Nearly half of engineering students admitted to this
. Scientists can easily get stipends, and therefore drift into doing a PhD
. But there are penalties, as well as benefits, to staying at university.
Workers with “surplus schooling”—more education than a job requires—
are likely to be less satisfied, less productive and more likely to say they
are going to leave their jobs.
The interests of universities and tenured academics are misaligned with
those
of PhD students
Academics tend to regard asking whether a PhD is worthwhile as analogous
to wondering whether there is too much art or culture in the world. They
believe that knowledge spills from universities into society, making it more
productive and healthier. That may well be true; but doing a PhD may still
be a bad choice for an individual.
The interests of academics and universities on the one hand and PhD students
on the other are not well aligned. The more bright students stay at
universities
, the better it is for academics. Postgraduate students bring in grants and
beef up their supervisors’ publication records. Academics pick bright
undergraduate
students and groom them as potential graduate students. It isn’t in their
interests to turn the smart kids away, at least at the beginning. One
female
student spoke of being told of glowing opportunities at the outset, but
after seven years of hard slog she was fobbed off with a joke about finding
a rich husband.
Monica Harris, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, is
a rare exception. She believes that too many PhDs are being produced, and
has stopped admitting them. But such unilateral academic birth control is
rare. One Ivy-League president, asked recently about PhD oversupply, said
that if the top universities cut back others will step in to offer them
instead.
Noble pursuits
Many of the drawbacks of doing a PhD are well known. Your correspondent was
aware of them over a decade ago while she slogged through a largely
pointless
PhD in theoretical ecology. As Europeans try to harmonise higher education
, some institutions are pushing the more structured learning that comes with
an American PhD.
The organisations that pay for research have realised that many PhDs find
it tough to transfer their skills into the job market. Writing lab reports
, giving academic presentations and conducting six-month literature reviews
can be surprisingly unhelpful in a world where technical knowledge has to
be assimilated quickly and presented simply to a wide audience. Some
universities
are now offering their PhD students training in soft skills such as
communication
and teamwork that may be useful in the labour market. In Britain a four-
year NewRoutePhD claims to develop just such skills in graduates.
Measurements and incentives might be changed, too. Some university
departments
and academics regard numbers of PhD graduates as an indicator of success
and compete to produce more. For the students, a measure of how quickly
those students get a permanent job, and what they earn, would be more useful
. Where penalties are levied on academics who allow PhDs to overrun, the
number of students who complete rises abruptly, suggesting that students
were previously allowed to fester.
Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and will
have been the best at everything they have done. They will have amassed
awards and prizes. As this year’s new crop of graduate students bounce into
their research, few will be willing to accept that the system they are
entering
could be designed for the benefit of others, that even hard work and
brilliance
may well not be enough to succeed, and that they would be better off doing
something else. They might use their research skills to look harder at the
lot of the disposable academic. Someone should write a thesis about that
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