People are talking about a recent article in The Economist on why obtaining a Ph.D. is supposedly “a waste of time.” The author—who confesses that she “slogged through a largely pointless Ph.D. in theoretical ecology” more than a decade ago—makes the usual argument that universities are overproducing Ph.D.’s (though some would counter that the problem isn’t too many Ph.D.’s but rather too few tenure-track jobs) and chastises universities for using doctoral students as “cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour.”
She also points out that the interests of doctoral students, for many of whom the pursuit of a Ph.D. is a labor of love, conflict with those of their professors: “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,” the author writes. Which is why, despite the fact that good academic job opportunities in many fields are dwindling, many Ph.D. programs still aren’t admitting fewer students, she suggests.
Over at The Monkey Cage, Joshua Tucker says he thinks it would be a mistake for universities to slash doctoral-student admissions. In academe, as in baseball, the only way to get the best and the brightest is to cast a wide net, he writes. Otherwise you risk missing out on potential gems in the rough, like the legendary New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza, who was “drafted in the 62nd(!) round of the 1988 baseball draft,” and went on “to become one of the (if not the) game’s best hitting catchers, and is a sure bet for the Hall of Fame,” Tucker writes:
Without a minor league system that allowed many, many more people to play some level of professional baseball than there were spots for in the major leagues, Piazza would never have made it to the majors. Being picked in the 62nd round shows that the talent evaluators at that stage of the process would have missed him as a potential star.
Like major league baseball, a successful academic career is a very good gig. Do we really owe every 22-year-old that is admitted to a Ph.D. program the right to that career solely on the basis of getting into a Ph.D. program? Or is it enough to give them a chance to succeed, knowing full well that not all of them will? Personally, I’d rather give more people a chance, in large part because I don’t think we know which 22-year-olds are going to make the best academics. Like it or not, academia is a meritocracy. It may be a highly flawed meritocracy susceptible to overvaluing labels or fads of the day, but ultimately tenure is bestowed on those who earn the respect of their peers, and the more of your peers that respect you, the more job offers you are going to get and the more money you are going to make. I fully believe we need to be honest with graduate students about what they are getting themselves into—the same way a minor league baseball player needs to know what the odds are of making it to the majors—but if they want to take a shot at achieving success in this kind of a career, I see no reason why we should excessively limit the number of people who have the opportunity to do so. And at the end of the day, that’s the trade-off here: the fewer students we admit to Ph.D. programs, the earlier we make the decision regarding who gets to be the next generation of professors.
But Andrew Gelman, another blogger at The Monkey Cage, isn’t convinced. He says he doesn’t believe meritocracy exists. And he points out that the main argument for cutting doctoral admissions “is not just that Ph.D. students are competing for a fixed number of jobs, but that the ready availability of low-paid Ph.D. students allows universities to reduce the number of faculty positions” by either getting students to teach or hiring adjuncts.
Tucker counters that “clamping down on the supply of potential adjuncts,” isn’t a good way to deal with this problem:
Indeed, cutting the number of admitted Ph.D. students seems to me to be one of the least effective ways of doing this. First of all, the supply is already out there, so it would take years if not decades or generations to affect policy this way. Second, it is not even clear that reducing the number of Ph.D’s would reduce the supply of available adjuncts. If universities want to hire adjuncts to cuts costs, then not having enough Ph.D. applicants is not necessarily going to stop them from doing so. Bottom line: my guess is the issue of using adjuncts instead of full-time faculty is driven by demand for low-cost teaching, not by an over-supply of extra potential teachers.
Read the posts in their entirety and share your thoughts.
Follow On Hiring through your favorite RSS reader: 
20 Responses to Ph.D. Admissions: the Debate Continues
robertkase51 - January 13, 2011 at 11:19 am
Holding or obtaining a Ph.D. doesn’t make one a good professor or a good researcher. Obtaining a job is now and always has been a great deal more than just having the degree. If one views the doctorate as only a means of getting a job, then some how the intent of the degree has been missed. College teaching requires skills that may or may not be obtained in the graduate experience, depending on the discipline and the position one is searching for. The aspect of calling graduate student experience cheap labor is silly. That experience is what, hopefully, prepares one for the exact positions these candidates hope to obtain. That is why it is called higher education.
vrufino - January 13, 2011 at 12:05 pm
No student is forced into becoming a doctoral student. The programs should be available to any who qualify. I see it as a case of “Buyer beware”. The degree is only the first step in obtaining employment; it part of the journey not the destination. If there are not enough available jobs in academia, then we have a more educated work force in other fields.
jaybernstein - January 13, 2011 at 12:09 pm
The problem is the adjunctization and the fact that retired lines are not preserved by hiring new tenure track people. Also, affirmative action persists, causing discrimination.
softshellcrab - January 13, 2011 at 12:10 pm
In the business disciplines, there is a shortage of qualified Ph.D.’s. The jobs are going begging. Basically,many times the choice is to either hire a foreign-born, poor English speaking person, or none at all.
One way to reduce excess Ph.D. programs would be to limit Ph.D. programs, and medical school also, to U.S. citizens. We owe no duty whatsoever to foreign persons. If a program will lead to a great job, let’s limit the program to U.S. citizens. If you allow foreign students to apply, they often do great on standardized tests, etc. and the doctoral programs in business and science, and medical schools, start to fill up with foreign students, who then claim top U.S. jobs ahead of Americans. We should have no hesitancy is saying that programs that lead to top jobs will be for U.S. citizens.
isaacbickerstaffesq - January 13, 2011 at 12:22 pm
So, at the risk of belaboring the metaphor, how can the “minor leagues” argument incorporate student debt? What percentage of baseball players that wash out before they make The Show wind up with injuries that significantly constrain their future career choices? What performance-enhancing drugs will someday invalidate most of the highly-cited publications from the last 20 years?
mforce1 - January 13, 2011 at 12:49 pm
This debate is missing two distinct points as well.
1. What about the PhD student who decides to obtain a PhD after a rich and rewarding career. That student takes their extensive knowledge and expertise into the relm of their Doctoral program and combines the two diciplines. Education is changing. Academia must change to meet the needs of a changing culture and populus.
2. What are the statistics of PhD students continuing beyond All But Dissertation status, (ABD)status?
unter2 - January 13, 2011 at 1:25 pm
In many professional/clinical areas there is a great shortage of Ph.D. faculty. Graduate students are encouraged to go on for the Ph.D., and are all but assured employment upon completion.
That being said, tuition is daunting, and salaries do not match those in the private sector. Consequently, the incentive to continue the (long, arduous, sometimes never-ending) path to the Ph.D. is limited. In fact, I completed my Ph.D. over 25 years ago and only entered academia 10 years ago (with a salary cut).
A previous comment re: ABD’s is quite interesting.
I have known a number of people who went quite far in graduate studies, yet never finished. The perception that it is very political, nearly impossible to obtain the Ph.D. persists.
If this perception is based in reality, we may find that higher education will suffer even more so in coming years.
Accreditation requirements of doctoral level faculty (and often Ph.D.’s are preferred)are rather strict, and, in these times of faculty shortages, may make it difficult for departments to stay afloat. Cut back doctoral studies? We can shut down now. But doctoral students do have to be well-informed as to the path they will be traveling, and what opportunities may exist at the end.
trterry - January 13, 2011 at 1:27 pm
The balance scale here is a disk on a point not a balance beam on a knife edge.
The following weights need to be placed on the disk:
1. It is a free country; if a person wants to get a PhD in an area where there are no jobs or few jobs they should have that right — provided that they pay for it (see below).
2. What subsidies are being provided to produce no-job & few-job PhD’s by third parties, e.g., state governments, general endowments, specific gifts.
3. What are the costs of the “few-job” PhD’s in areas where a smaller volume is needed than what is being produced? For example, to run a college you need an english department at least to teach writing skills to the general student population,you need a history department to teach history to the general student population, etc.
4. How much money is spent chasing “prestige” grants ? Let us suppose that a PhD student has enough personal money or family money to pay for any research that they need to do for their degree. Such people do exist! The amounts of some of these grants (often less than $10K) vs. the amount of time spend applying for and getting them make them seem silly. When you question the seeming waste of time and money that could be spent on something more productive you hear, “OH, if you do not get one of those you will never get a good job.”
5. What is the cost in faculty time that is taken from what we might call paying work, i.e., paid by the central administration on a per student hour basis, to teach, advise, and direct research of PhD students?
As hard as it is to do these factors need to be quantified and assigned a weight, i.e.,distance from the center point on the disk, and see on paper how the disk would tip in real life.
I expect what in time will happen is that some hard nosed college money man or woman is going to come down and say something like this to each no-job or few-job PhD program:
“Over the last 3 to 5 years nationwide X PhD’s in this field have been graduated. Of that X we have produced A%. Over that period there were Y full-time tenure track job openings and Z full-time non-tenure track openings in US colleges and universities. From now on the central administration’s subsidy for this progam will only be enough to support A%(Y + X) PhD graduations per year. Everyone else pays full freight, that is the stated fees times 300% (or whatever the total,true, non-sudizized cost per PhD student per year is).”
This would serve to bring in reality.
I do not have an answer to the “prestige” grant problem. If someone or some private group wants to do it #1 applies, it is a free country. Maybe it is time for the umbrella groups (MLA, American Historical Society, etc.) to start discouraging such things or at least discourage the “$2.98″ grants that go with them. The students would be better off spending the time on their real PhD work rather than on these piddling grants.
Finally the student loan programs. Again it is a free country but for any student to run up over $100K in student loans for any reason prior to joining the work force is probably imprudent from the beginning. These loans can not be bankrupted and due to the wonders of compound interest, even low compound interest, can fast become an insurmountable financial hill that is impossible to climb.
Until the financial reality is brough home to the no-job and few-job department heads and deans they will keep on taking the college’s money and grinding the PhD’s out. And, why not. As long a you are foolish enough to give me the money I am going to take it. No student has a ball and chain.
T Rankin Terry, Jr.
1/13/2011
zagros - January 13, 2011 at 5:34 pm
There are five critical differences between baseball and academia:
1) Few, if any, baseball players aspire to be minor league players but many potential PhD students realize that they are more attracted to teaching-oriented university or even community colleges.
2) Even those who make it to the R1 schools (the equivalent of a major league team) rarely make much into the six figures. Certainly there are a few superstars who make a lot of money but even benchwarmers in the major leagues are millionaires in baseball.
3) Everyone outside of major league baseball knows the difficulty of reaching the major leagues. There are no articles that would suggest a baseball shortage is out there and there are literally millions of young boys (and girls) who want to be baseball players in the major leagues. Academia has relatively few people wanting to pursue this line (as my wife reminds everyone when I tell them that I have a PhD, we are the doctors who don’t actually make any money) and yet there are still articles in the popular press about the tidal wave of potential hiring that will come because of retirements of baby boomer professors.
4) Baseball truly is a meritocracy. Academia is not. You get into the R1 schools because you went to a top 5 school in your discipline. Pure and simple (of course, you only stay at a top 5 school if you do well but that doesn’t mean that you can get there otherwise). Almost no other way to get there. Few outside academia (or even in academia) tell you this. In my department, I publish 3-4 articles every year in mid to high level journals and another of my colleagues has 12 books and 70 articles with a great international reputation but no one looks at us from R1s because of our pedigree.
5) The notion of paying for superstars is overrated anyway. Since the superstars are (by their very nature) research-based, virtually all benefits accrue to the individual professor (except for areas such as engineering that generate patents), unlike the benefits that accrue to the baseball team. Superstar teachers will, of course, benefit the university in terms of retention and graduation rates but R1 schools are notorious for firing those with teaching skills but sorry research records, while retaining those with solid research records but poor teaching skills. So why are we paying for talent when we do not reap their benefits?
poday - January 13, 2011 at 10:07 pm
This debate has an unreal qualoity to it in that it largely ignores the ever present elephant of discrimination. I received my Ph.D. from a mid-level state university because I was able to become the first doctoral student of a stellar professor there. While many minority students were snapped up at great universities when they were getting close to finishing their Ph.Ds, I know of only one other white male who ended up at a four year college or university.
Most of the rest teach at community colleges or have retreated deep into embittered, private lives. In my case, I happen to owe $165,000 in unpaid student loans. As I like to say, “I am a man of great personal wealth. The only problem is that it is all negative”. I can largely say the same thing about my educational experience. Patrick O’Day
fortysomethingprof - January 13, 2011 at 11:55 pm
As a scientist it is hard for me to appreciate the difficulties facing students in disciplines where the only jobs are in academics. In such fields it is hard to imagine why one needs more than perhaps a couple of dozen doctoral programs nationwide.
alex_geo - January 14, 2011 at 1:22 am
I feel ashamed after reading these articles. I accepted a short term teaching position against a modest raise in my postdoc salary. I realise (much too late) that I have shot myself in the leg.
Universities wiil continue to take advantage of young academics’ ambitions as long as we continue to fail understanding 101 economics. Instead of opening an extra faculty position, my (Ivy league) university used my despearate situation to obtain a qualified teacher for less.
Next time, I’d rather stay hungry.
Next time, there will be another Nameless Fool, PhD.
uasoe - January 14, 2011 at 7:17 am
I think the worst PhDs are theology, some joked that they
spent 4 years researching and writing a thesis for emotional experience or ritual that lasts less than 4 minutes (baptism
in which the head is immersed in the water). It is about
supply and demand. When there will be more jobs in now
poor developing foreign countries (PhD student exporter
nations), less competent students’d go for graduate schools
and professors may stop hiring those foreign graduates as
TA/RA when hiring 4 years US college graduates for TA
and RA will be less riskier and cheaper. But the movement
is not unidirectional, now Korean universities and A* in
Singapore are hiring graduates from western universities
as adj. professors or temporary contract researchers, UK
is shifting its PhD programmes into 50% thesis PhDs (from
100%) and preparing them for private sector jobs.PhD will
be alike today Master degree and today Master degree will
be alike yesterday Bachelors.
Some US universities run MD-PhD programmes and even with
soft skills and MBA modules (those are 6 to 8 years long)
will be newer terminal graduate degrees. Only rarity and
releavance create the value. Let market forces take care.
t_rey - January 17, 2011 at 7:19 am
It seems to me that there is a great misconception of the applications of obtaining a PhD. To be sure, I would love to teach and conduct research at a university while getting paid for it upon the completion of my PhD, but if this doesn’t happen, is it the end of the world? Have I accumulated a mountain of debt and spent years of my life on something that will turn out to be a waste should I fail to land a faculty position? I think that is to sell the degree short.
In the interest of full disclosure, my PhD is in theology, that “worst PhD” as someone above commented (and he might be right, if we only consider faculty positions as the appropriate end; the supply of PhDs in some area of Christian theology, particularly New Testament, arguably exceeds the demand by a greater margin than any other discipline). So I have a ready made “fall back” of working in the church, though from a theological standpoint it is terrible to refer to working in a church as a “fall back.” Yet, in most churches a PhD is superfluous (you only need a masters, and sometimes not even that), if not a hindrance to work in a church as many see those with a PhD as either too elitist or too esoteric for their day to day lives. Does that make my degree a waste if I don’t get that faculty position? Even if I end up working outside of my field, I wouldn’t view my time and money spent (or debt accumulated) on a PhD as a waste, at least I hope not.
There are skills acquired during a PhD that should improve work in any number of areas. The advanced critical thinking, the ability to perform a highly specialized research, the juggling of work, family, and other activities (for those whom have the former two obligations), among many other skills are not skills to which my discipline holds a monopoly, nor does academia at large. Businesses and non-profit organizations could use people with those skills, even if I might enter in at a low level rank (and even if I never advance). I may end up being in mid-level employee, though I hope not, but if I do I will be a better employee than I had been had I not earned a PhD.
Additionally, there is value in the earning of a PhD. The flexibility of when I would work and how I would direct my research is something that I will never have again, even if I obtain the coveted tenure-track position. For me, this flexibility came at a wonderful time when my children were born, so that I could spend more time with them when they were awake and working when they were asleep than I would otherwise have had opportunity to do in any other area outside of PhD student.
Furthermore, it occurs to me that a large number of PhDs unnecessarily limit their own career prospects, either by specific job type, specific geographical location, or both. There are other positions besides tenured professorships at research institutions. There are non-tenure positions, 2-year college positions, librarianships (a subject area librarian need only obtain an additional MLS degree approx. 1 year fulltime), work in other non-profit sector areas, even [gasp] teaching at secondary (middle school and high school) level. And these positions are available around the country and outside of it (Southern California is only a nice place to live if you have a job).
Admittedly, I chose to pursue a PhD in light of the increased leniancy on loan forgiveness offered first under Bush and increased under Obama, that will allow me to make income sensitive repayment and, provided I work for a non-profit, or other “community service” entity, will discharge my debt after 10 years of such work (providing I don’t default), meaning I will never pay most of it back provided I work in one of these areas. I know that is not an option for many who already have obtained PhDs, but it is for those undertaking such degrees now. Couldn’t the non-profit sector benefit from a few extra PhDs? And while 10 years is a lengthy commitment, it’s not as long as 30.
Finally, I am somewhat troubled by the remarks of some that US jobs in academia should only go to graduates of US universities who should only admit US citizens to PhD programs. This is far from a free market, and far from facing the problem. Such a strategy would result in universities falling farther behind the rest of the world and would ultimately set the country back. There needs to be a more open approach to admitting those outside the US culture in order to broaden horizons and inject fresh perspectives. Such a comment also exhibits a gross misunderstanding of the current immigration policies related to students and job seekers in the US. It is far from easy to be granted such a visa, and the restrictions placed upon such an individual are incredibly stringent. Full disclosure again, I am US citizen who is working on my PhD in the UK where the policies, while somewhat better, are still comparable and still unbelievably stringent. There needs to be a greater openness among all countries, an American should be able to seek education and employment in Spain as easily as they should in America. The rest of the marketplace is becoming increasingly globalized, why should academia be exempted?
polisciguy - January 22, 2011 at 10:51 am
I finished my second master’s last year and have plumbed the depths of the local job market with some angst. I have a high school teaching job but want to return to teaching at the college level, albeit in a new discipline, one which has grasped my attention since I was an undergrad more than a few years back. The desire to stay close to family and pay off school loans prompts me to seek regional community college positions, but the drive to teach at the post-secondary level tempts me to look for jobs without considering the time zone or distance from “home.” In the back of my mind, I hear the voice telling me, “If I only had a PhD…”
Thankfully, I had some good professors in my most recent graduate program who were generous enough with their time and advice to tell me the truth: going for the PhD, even if you can do the work, often is not the best approach. The assumption is that the degree will open doors, but if you are seeking a teaching-driven position at the community college level, for example, the dearth of positions will end long before your program does. And if you want to teach at a smaller university, perhaps a faith-based private college, the salary will never be commensurate with your financial obligations.
I agree that the MA has become the BA of our era and that saddens me. We cheapen the value of graduate education at all levels and simultaneously raise the cost of said learning. Graduate programs emphasize research methods over teaching techniques because that’s what the Academy claims is needed and college and universities subsequently have deluded themselves into believing that three little letters mean the candidate can teach content in a way the students will understand and be able to apply.
When I was a teenager, my dream car was a Lambourghini. And while I still long for the fine Italian sport car, I drive a Saturn to work every day. Yet, the car is reliable and performs just fine, despite the lack of pedigree. Wouldn’t it be nice if all colleges looked at job candidates in the same way? That’s at least what I tell myself I scour job websites and attend job fairs. We’ll see how well that works out.
You know, if I only had a PhD…
blazjaso - February 4, 2011 at 2:49 am
Between hiring foreign and first teir PhD graduates – combined with the recession – their is simply no room for graduates like me. I will have a doctorate soon from. . . let us say ‘less than a first tier institution’ in political science. I have published many articles in reputable journals and even a book chapter. I have presented research at over a dozen conferences in the last 4 years ranging from political science to Asian studies to social science. I have also instructed courses in American Government, American History, East Asian Politics, and European History. However, none of this matters. PhD graduates from ‘greater’ institutions in the US and other nations will always be hired before me. Whether they have any publications, many conferences or can even teach matters not. Perhaps I am generalizing, but this has been my experience… so far. Perhaps it is an unfair system, but it is the system and it is reality.