Should academia reduce the number of graduate students they admit to doctoral programs?

[juilletmercredi]

Inspired by a lot of articles I've been reading lately.

 

Since 2009, there have been a spate of articles recounting the horrors of the job market. Several of them have been linked here. Basically, the message is that - especially in the humanities and social sciences, but in the natural and physical sciences as well - the academic job market has crashed. There aren't enough tenure-track academic jobs for all of the PhD students who are graduating every year, and thus new PhD graduates finish in a landscape in which they have been prepared for jobs that no longer exist for them.

 

Several solutions have been proposed to remedy this, but one that I've seen come up frequently is admitting fewer students to doctoral programs overall. The suggestion has been as mild as every doctoral program should simply slash how many they admit, to as extreme as the field should eliminate a significant number of existing doctoral programs and greatly reduce the number of students admitted to the ones left. The argument is that - particularly in the humanities and social sciences - the only ones getting good tenure-track jobs are coming out of a small handful of programs anyway.

 

The "other" side argues against this. Doctoral programs are important for the prestige and reputation of a university, they say, and smaller numbers of graduate students means that professors will offer fewer graduate courses and seminars, leaving doctoral students with less flexibility and customization of their degrees. Less science will get done in programs that use graduate students to support research. Furthermore, they say, tenure-track academic jobs aren't the only useful way to to use a PhD - and those graduates who choose not to go into academia might use their PhDs in creative, exciting other ways. Lastly, I often see the argument that a PhD isn't job training anyway. It's an opportunity for young scholars to immerse themselves in research/scholarship for 4-10 years and adopt a new way of thinking; whether or not they get an academic job at the end is irrelevant.

 

What do you all think?

[eeee1923]

Coming from the STEM side of things, I don't believe that academic jobs are the only path that students (or young scholars) should be pursuing. In fact, I've never really considered a TT job, the end goal - mostly due to seeing the struggles that my father had to endure when I was growing up (he was in academia but eventually left for industry). I've even read that due to the academic market landscape, a majority of young PhD holders are seeking alternative paths (for example tech, industry, law, policy, etc.) - making the TT path the new "alternative" career line.

 

The suggestion of letting in less students is interesting to me: how would these programs limit the entrance of students? At this point a lot of the top programs in just about every field have a staggering amount of not just good but excellent applicants that are extremely hard to distinguish from one another. What if the next Einstein, scored a bit too low on his GRE? Or didn't articulate himself well enough in his SOP? Or wasn't able to secure a summer research position? I do not envy the profs sitting on Adcomms.

 

I understand the logic of the proposal, but in order to push the bounds of human knowledge (which is what doctoral programs strive to achieve), programs need a good deal of creative thinkers/researchers. Since past research experience is not absolutely indicative of future success, programs have to play the numbers game and let in a decent amount of applicants in order to keep the program running (help PI's with their projects, TA undergrads, etc) and hope (for lack of better phrasing) that the applicants are able to discover some interesting or paradigm shifting phenomena to keep the program well funded and achieve the goal of the doctoral degree. I feel that with less students, these necessary expansions in human knowledge would come about slower or go undiscovered but hey that's just one opinion.

 

I have to disagree with the argument that a PhD is not job training. What is gained from almost every level of the post secondary educational experience, can serve as job training - if not directly, then through the transferable skills and life experience garnered by going through the process. While it would be nice to just spend a few years immersed in the experience, it would be naive to take on such an endeavor as a PhD just to "adopt a new way of thinking" for the sake of it. PhD students/candidates/holders are all humans and unfortunately time is not an endless commodity we're given - so if we have the opportunity to fine tune our scholastic and academic abilities, those new found skills should be put to use better the human experience to some degree through the career line we eventually choose (which is a very subjective notion, but hey). 

 

Overall, I think that academic jobs are not the be all and end all of the PhD degree. In some fields it may be a lot more difficult, but I believe that PhDs may serve a better role in "alternative" career paths. Therefore I do not believe that PhD programs should let in - the admission process is quite cutthroat as it is.

 

I'd be quite interested in hearing how others feel on this topic.

Edited June 29, 2015 by eteshoe

[ExponentialDecay]

Was there ever a time in history when there were enough tenure-track positions for all graduating PhDs?

 

Wouldn't slashing programs exacerbate the problem, at least in the short term? 

 

As regards reducing cohorts, considering most programs in the humanities and social sciences admit 5 +-3 people a cycle, and considering the abysmal attrition rates at the vast majority of grad programs in any field, how much more can these cohorts realistically be cut?

 

My chief frustration about this process is the catastrophic lack of data and obfuscation of facts that goes on in academia, and in the humanities in particular. I'd like to take a look at whether the prestige-hiring trend changes after every polytechnic in the country starts calling itself a university, because I don't suspect that it does. I've never in my life heard any other logic than that humanities scholarship is a calling rather than a profession, and that scholarship in the soft and hard sciences is more hopeful, but still contingent on institutional prestige and on the whims of public policy.

Edited June 29, 2015 by ExponentialDecay

[Taeyers]

eteshoe, I couldn't agree with you more. You've basically said everything I would have. 

 

I'm also in a STEM field, so while I recognize that the situation in humanities very well may be more dire than in STEM, I don't personally see an issue with how many PhD students are admitted. The majority of the students in my department, including myself, are planning to pursue a career track other than academia (thus the poor TT job market is a non-issue). We are doing very interesting science, learning how to be creative and skilled investigators, and have a variety of options for pursuing scientific careers that would be taken away from us if we were more aggressively weeded out of the admissions pool. 

 

I think the solution would be to more diligently educate graduate school hopefuls about their potential career tracks and success statistics before they make the decision to apply to attend, rather than to actually bar them from pursuing the programs if they are qualified for them. 

Edited June 29, 2015 by Taeyers

[Taeyers]

Was there ever a time in history when there were enough tenure-track positions for all graduating PhDs?

 

 

This is also an important point. We recently had a visiting bigshot scientist who sat down with the students in my program point out that while 17% of students succeed at finding a TT job now, a decade or two ago it was actually the same. 

[rising_star]

Was there ever a time in history when there were enough tenure-track positions for all graduating PhDs?

 

This is discipline-specific. In one of my areas, there were the same number of PhDs graduating and TT positions every year for almost two decades until about 5 years ago. I can't find a handy link to the data but I do remember being shown the data in the early years of grad school.

 

I wonder though why the focus is on reducing the number of students in programs, rather than encouraging colleges and universities to hire full-time positions rather than relying on adjuncts? Because part of the reason the academic job market is so poor is because there are fewer TT positions as TT/tenured faculty are replaced with adjuncts, VAPs, and (rarely) full-time lecturers. Instead of just focusing on supply, we should also consider demand.

 

That said, I'm in a social science fields where cohorts are much larger than the numbers ExponentialDecay suggests. My incoming cohort was 16 students, with a mix of master's and PhD students in that. Some left with just a masters and some never finished after hitting the ABD stage so there's definitely some attrition there. Still, there's also the fact that many people (including myself) didn't do a PhD with the expectation of getting an academic position. My mother has a PhD and has literally never taught in a college classroom (didn't even do it while in grad school) so I've always known that there are things you can do with a PhD besides be a college professor. Now did I always take the right steps to make those happen while in graduate school? No. If I could go back in time, I would tell younger me to take more quantitative classes (statistics, research design, etc.), possibly some accounting or business classes, and also courses in student affairs. I may now go back to school to get some of that training (though not as part of a formal degree program!) just to facilitate future job opportunities I want to pursue.

[ExponentialDecay]

In one of my areas, there were the same number of PhDs graduating and TT positions every year for almost two decades until about 5 years ago. I can't find a handy link to the data but I do remember being shown the data in the early years of grad school.

 

Just out of curiosity, what was that area? I'm assuming it's not quantitative, so my uneducated guess would be some sort of -studies or some kind of area politics.

 

I wonder though why the focus is on reducing the number of students in programs, rather than encouraging colleges and universities to hire full-time positions rather than relying on adjuncts?

 

Because it's cheaper.

[Cheshire_Cat]

Well, I come from a field where the *lack* of Ph.Ds actually prompted our main professional organization to set up a scholarship so that more students would be incentivized to get their Ph.D.  So, I can't really speak to my own industry.  But from an economic perspective, I think decreasing supply is one way of dealing with the academic bust.

I think it all comes down to rising costs of education.  That is why we hire adjuncts instead of TTs.  And as the costs rise, it becomes more cost prohibitive for undergrads to major in areas that may not be economically stable, which compounds the problem.

[TakeruK]

I've been thinking about this problem a lot too. In my side of STEM, this is a topic that comes up fairly often.

 

In my opinion, the worst part of a career in academia is that you are expected to give up a lot and delay a lot of things in life (stability) in order for a chance at a permanent job. This is stressful and does turn people away from academia and as a result, we lose diversity of thought.

 

I think the best way to address this is to purposely set up a limit somewhere so that you know if you didn't make it through that limit, you won't get a job in academia and you can move on to other interests / career paths. However, it is tricky where to place the limit because wherever you place the limit, you run the problem of someone getting cut that 1) has not yet reached their peak, or 2) the system has not yet allowed them to prove themselves. And losing these people also loses diversity of thought. If you place it too early, you lose people but if you place it too late, it has no effect.

 

I think that graduate school admission is too early. I don't think it is possible to evaluate a senior undergrad (or a recent graduate) and know for sure that "this person will make a great academic" or "this person is not cut out for academia". At this stage, we are not anywhere being close to experts in our field! We have just begun. In addition, I agree with the other posters that academic jobs should not be the only desired outcome of a PhD and in fact, a PhD should be job training for a variety of careers.

 

I think the long grind of postdocs, one after another, constantly moving, with no stability and maybe even no benefits, is what drives people out of academia. Personally, I am only going to do postdocs if I think there is a good chance it will lead to a permeant position (either TT or staff scientist). So, I think this is where the bottleneck/limit should exist.

 

That is, I think (at least in my field), the problem is not that there are too many PhD graduates and not enough permanent academic positions, but that there are too many postdocs and not enough permanent jobs. I think we should drastically decrease the number of postdocs available so that you only get a postdoc if people believe that you have a good chance at a permanent job. And I think the best way to make this happen is to enforce minimum standards on postdoc salaries and benefits. If we make postdocs cost more, they will no longer be the "cheap workhorse labour" and every school will need to be a lot more picky on who they hire, and this will remove all of the PhD holders that are good enough for postdocs but not good enough for permanent jobs. Maybe this is not true for everyone, but if I am not competitive enough for a TT position and even if a TT position is my dream, I would rather have my dreams be "crushed" at rejections from all postdocs rather than go through 3-4 postdocs and finally realizing that it will never happen. 

 

In my field, I think the "eternal postdoc" is what we fear, more so than adjunct positions. But I think for fields where there are a lot more adjuncts, the same principle could apply. That is, the University tends to treat postdocs and adjuncts as people they don't deem good enough to hire permanently, but hey, they still need to get the research and teaching done! I think these positions are being exploited by many Universities.

 

Okay, so how do we enforce minimum standards on salaries and benefits? I'm going to say what some people think are dirty words: collective bargaining. I'm thinking, for each field, a nationwide organization that collectively bargains on behalf of all the postdocs and adjuncts in that field. It won't be as complex as the detailed collective bargaining agreements that local unions have with their employers, but just standard minimum salaries and benefits packages (like a "minimum wage" law). We already have powerful organizations in place: things like the American Astronomical Society (AAS) for my field. The AAS runs all of the major American journals and conferences in my field. With support of the AAS and the major Universities, I think this can happen. Of course, the major Universities are the same Universities that have the most to lose from such an arrangement, so this will be tricky to handle. But if the AAS enforces minimums by doing things like "If you don't pay your postdocs this much, we won't publish any of your articles" and if the top 10 universities support the AAS in this endeavour (so that the AAS journals remains the highest impact journals), then I think it can happen. But this is just a dream for now. If I ever get in a position where I can push this agenda, I will!

[ballwera]

 

That is, I think (at least in my field), the problem is not that there are too many PhD graduates and not enough permanent academic positions, but that there are too many postdocs and not enough permanent jobs. I think we should drastically decrease the number of postdocs available so that you only get a postdoc if people believe that you have a good chance at a permanent job. And I think the best way to make this happen is to enforce minimum standards on postdoc salaries and benefits. If we make postdocs cost more, they will no longer be the "cheap workhorse labour" and every school will need to be a lot more picky on who they hire, and this will remove all of the PhD holders that are good enough for postdocs but not good enough for permanent jobs. Maybe this is not true for everyone, but if I am not competitive enough for a TT position and even if a TT position is my dream, I would rather have my dreams be "crushed" at rejections from all postdocs rather than go through 3-4 postdocs and finally realizing that it will never happen. 

 

 

This already exists for Biomed. Postdoc salaries (minimums) are set by the NIH, but there is still a glut of postdocs. It seems to me that there is a lot of luck involved in the whole process. (i.e being in the right lab at the right time)

[TakeruK]

This already exists for Biomed. Postdoc salaries (minimums) are set by the NIH, but there is still a glut of postdocs. It seems to me that there is a lot of luck involved in the whole process. (i.e being in the right lab at the right time)

 

Hmm interesting. At the same time, out of the STEM fields, I hear the most complaints about the postdoc salary from my bio friends. Some of them even show that in some cases, you actually make less (or just about the same) money as a postdoc as a graduate student (since postdoc pay FICA payroll taxes while grad students do not). 

 

I just looked up the NIH minimums: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-15-048.html. Hope that was the correct one. The minimums there are much lower than the numbers I had in mind when writing about minimums and I only see numbers for health insurance benefits, not other benefits.

 

However, I'm not going to claim to be qualified to say what the postdoc minimum stipend should actually be. I guess the spirit of my suggestion is not simply setting a number, but changing the mindset of how our field treats the postdoc position. I feel like right now, when our field hires a postdoc, they consider them a temporary worker that will produce science but beyond that there is little investment in the postdoc. I would like to see the field change to treat the postdoc as the "entry level position" to an academic career instead of one that is still "in training" (that's what grad school should be). Postdocs should have access to the same benefits as faculty and when our field hires a postdoc, we should be investing our time and money into ensuring that postdoc will succeed in academia. 

[rising_star]

Just out of curiosity, what was that area? I'm assuming it's not quantitative, so my uneducated guess would be some sort of -studies or some kind of area politics.

 

For anonymity's sake, I'm not saying. I'm not talking about a subfield within a discipline but an entire discipline. The data was put out by the national association to show this.

 

And while adjuncts are cheaper in some sense, they also aren't cheaper. If one reduces the number of grad students to match the number of available TT positions, who will do the teaching that is currently done by grad students in the humanities and social sciences? At least in the short run, you could hire adjuncts to do it. But, eventually, you'll need more adjuncts than you can find since you've decreased the number of people earning a PhD. At that point, universities will either have to let people without a PhD teach, increase class sizes, go the MOOC route, or find other ways to get qualified teachers. Reducing the number of PhD students in a program is merely a short-term fix that doesn't address the broader structural changes universities have undergone in the past 25 years. 

[dr. t]

Answers to sundries:

 

1) The first job market crash was in the mid to late '70s. Before that, you often did not even need a PhD to obtain a TT position, particularly if you came out of certain parts of the English system.

 

2) I would challenge ExponentialDecay to back up his or her assertion that "most programs in the humanities and social sciences admit 5 +-3 people a cycle". All the top history programs take ~12-18. Most state history programs still take ~20-30. 

 

Humanities (specifically history) Perspective:

 

With respect to numbers, I think a yield of ~15 for a discipline with many subfields is sustainable. It means 2-3 students in the pipeline for a subdiscipline per school at any one time. Taking more students is not, I think, sustainable, and in most cases is very clearly done as a way to get more cheap instructors. 

 

History as a field has a surprising amount of data available with respect to job search outcomes. First, the American Historical Association did a study which said that, for PhDs who graduated since 2000, 50% were in TT jobs, 25% were in non-TT academic jobs, and 25% has left academia. These numbers are actually really encouraging, which is, in and of itself, sad.

 

Second, there was a study which has been discussed a lot around here on the influence of prestige on academic hires for business, computer science, and history. For history, the study determined that the top ~20 schools disproportionately dominated placements at the 200-odd nationally ranked and accredited universities in the US. To whit, 2856 out of 4538, or 62.9%, of TT positions at these universities were filled by PhDs from top-20 schools. A whopping 877 (19.3%) got their PhDs from Harvard, Yale, or UCBerkeley. 324 (7.1%) are from Harvard. This is all despite the fact that none (AFAIK) of these top-20 programs seek to matriculate more than about ~15 students each year.

 

From this data, I draw several conclusions. First, the field of history produces ~25-35% more PhDs than it needs. Second, not all PhDs are created equal. Third, PhD production needs to be cut, but it needs to be cut in some places more than it needs to be cut in others.

Edited June 29, 2015 by telkanuru

[Roll Right]

I find it strange that this problem is being discussed so mechanistically - as if it were merely a question of supply and demand.

 

I don't think supply vs. demand is the problem here. That is a symptom of a larger issue that nearly all universities are wrestling with: the restructuring of modern capitalism according to neoliberalism, coupled with the imposition of "lean production" techniques in nearly all sectors of the economy.

 

Universities have not escaped the restructuring process. In fact, many universities have adopted neoliberal administrative apparatuses that are intent on cutting costs while increasing their profit margins. Labor is one of the biggest expenses for universities (and any other profit driven enterprise). So, in order to increase their profit margin, universities have cut labor costs. They have accomplished this, in part, by transforming tenure and full time positions into temporary adjunct positions that are worth (according to administrators) a very small sum of money.

 

Workers who hold these temporary positions are often hired "just in time" - that is, just before classes start. Benefits are not offered because the position is part-time. Moreover, adjuncts typically aren't compensated for course preparation time, and they usually aren't granted institutional support aside from the poor wages they are paid.

 

There are plenty of these positions to go around. So, there is plenty of "demand" in that sense. Its just not the "demand" that PhDs expect.

 

So - why "limit" the supply of PhDs when the problem is not "supply versus demand?" The problem is the neoliberal model that universities have adopted.

Edited June 29, 2015 by Roll Right

[Vene]

I definitely don't agree that a PhD should just be pursued for intellectual enrichment. You could make the argument that an undergraduate degree can follow that model to some extent, as it requires broad education, but a PhD is highly specialized. Somebody with a BA in [Non-Vocational Major] will learn skills that they should be able to use in a wide variety of careers even if they never work in their major, due to general education requirements. PhDs don't have this. So, it is important that PhD programs keep on eye on the job market and where its graduates end up (and not just where they do a postdoc, I'm talking about 5, 10, 20 years after graduation).

 

I don't think that TT professorships is the only job that matters. This is in part because of my career goals, but there are other jobs out there where a PhD is valued and if somebody gets a PhD in field x and is able to work outside of academia at a high level on something where x is important I don't think there's a problem. More concretely, I see no problems with somebody with a PhD in chemistry working as head of regulatory affairs at a drug manufacturer. I do see problems if instead the PhD in chemistry works at a car wash. There's definitely cause for debate on what an appropriate job is, of course.

 

Unfortunately, universities are probably the least important players in this problem. If funding agencies (such as the NIH) operate under the assumption that a PI will have multiple graduate students, then there's not much that can be done at the university level as you can't do the research without the money. I can easily see a lab having a hard time with productivity as graduate students are probably the most inexpensive form of labor. I also do wonder what will happen to the people who would have done a PhD, but don't because the program is shrunk. Sure, the PhD employment rate looks better, but that's because you just shrunk the pool. So, instead of having a PhD and working at a car wash, you have a BS and work at a car wash. By not doing the PhD has that individual's life really improved any? Now, if I'm wrong and instead of working at a car wash that individual finds an office job with benefits, this isn't a concern. But, I feel that this is really important information.

[TakeruK]

I find it strange that this problem is being discussed so mechanistically - as if it were merely a question of supply and demand.

 

I don't think supply vs. demand is the problem here. That is a symptom of a larger issue that nearly all universities are wrestling with: the restructuring of modern capitalism according to neoliberalism, coupled with the imposition of "lean production" techniques in nearly all sectors of the economy.

 

Universities have not escaped the restructuring process. In fact, many universities have adopted neoliberal administrative apparatuses that are intent on cutting costs while increasing their profit margins. Labor is one of the biggest expenses for universities (and any other profit driven enterprise). So, in order to increase their profit margin, universities have cut labor costs. They have accomplished this, in part, by transforming tenure and full time positions into temporary adjunct positions that are worth (according to administrators) a very small sum of money.

 

Workers who hold these temporary positions are often hired "just in time" - that is, just before classes start. Benefits are not offered because the position is part-time. Moreover, adjuncts typically aren't compensated for course preparation time, and they usually aren't granted institutional support aside from the poor wages they are paid.

 

There are plenty of these positions to go around. So, there is plenty of "demand" in that sense. Its just not the "demand" that PhDs expect.

 

So - why "limit" the supply of PhDs when the problem is not "supply versus demand?" The problem is the neoliberal model that universities have adopted.

 

I think this is very true. My suggestion was a way to use the existing system to force the existing system to change. By making it impossible for Universities to hire adjuncts or postdocs part-time to fill this need, it should hopefully force the Universities to consider a different model of getting the labour they need.

 

My current school does something similar for graduate student stipends. For a little anonymity and simplicity, I'll use some made-up numbers and gloss over some details. At my program, the on-paper tuition costs $30,000/year but no one actually pays that money. It's just set to be equal to undergraduate tuition. Instead, the University simply charges "overhead" of $20,000 per student to each professor that has a graduate student. On paper, this appears as the professor/department providing $20,000 of tuition support and the graduate office supplying $10,000 of tuition support. The Graduate Office sets "suggested" minimum stipends on campus (let's say it's $28,000/year). I asked them what does "suggested" mean and the answer is that any department that does not pay their graduate students the minimum stipend will forfeit the $10,000/year of tuition support. So, departments have incentive to pay the minimum stipend of $28,000 (total cost $48,000/year) instead of trying to pay only $25,000/year but end up paying an extra $10,000 in tuition (total cost $55,000/year).

 

In theory, even though cost of living here is high, I do believe that our school can get away with paying students less. When talking to my friends about what might drive stipend levels, we think this might be true. If we put aside the morality of paying graduate students enough to survive (or, if all schools already do this and now we're just talking about disposable income), some suggests that market forces would mean prestigious schools can get away with paying students less (since students would still want to go there) while less prestigious schools would pay more in order to be more attractive. After all, it does fit the current model that Universities adapted (get the most science output for least money spent).

 

So I think the "incentivized minimum stipend" model that our Graduate Office enforces is a good way to avoid exploiting graduate student labour even more than it could be. I think similar programs at the postdoctoral/adjunct level could work too.

[TakeruK]

Unfortunately, universities are probably the least important players in this problem. If funding agencies (such as the NIH) operate under the assumption that a PI will have multiple graduate students, then there's not much that can be done at the university level as you can't do the research without the money. I can easily see a lab having a hard time with productivity as graduate students are probably the most inexpensive form of labor. I also do wonder what will happen to the people who would have done a PhD, but don't because the program is shrunk. Sure, the PhD employment rate looks better, but that's because you just shrunk the pool. So, instead of having a PhD and working at a car wash, you have a BS and work at a car wash. By not doing the PhD has that individual's life really improved any? Now, if I'm wrong and instead of working at a car wash that individual finds an office job with benefits, this isn't a concern. But, I feel that this is really important information.

 

(emphasis added). Yes, I do think so. Assuming in your simple example that both the BS car washer and the PhD car washer will remain car washers for life (or similar career paths that don't require either degree), I would say the person with the BS is better off because they didn't spend the time in a PhD program. I also think academia (and the nation in general, as funders of academia) is better off because we didn't train a person to receive a PhD so that they can work at a car wash. (Note: This last sentence is intended as the logical consequence of my argument applied to your chosen scenario where the cutoff is at the grad school level, i.e. limiting the number of PhDs created).

 

I think it is a good idea to shrink the pool (but as I said above, at the postdoc level rather than grad school level) so that instead of spreading resources thinly over a large amount of people, we focus the resources on ensuring we take good care of a smaller amount of people. One tricky part, in my opinion, is where to make this divide as you don't want to make the selection too early in the pipeline. So, to modify your example to my suggestion, I would say that I think hiring a postdoc should be a bigger commitment than it is now. And that the idea is to weed out people at the postdoc application stage, so that the only people who get postdocs are the "smaller pool of people" mentioned here. That is, our community/academia should feel like the system has failed if we hired a postdoc that was then unable to be competitive for a permanent job in academia. Postdocs should be the first step of a permanent academic job, not a (potentially infinitely expanding) bridge between grad school and a permanent job.

[MathCat]

I definitely don't agree that a PhD should just be pursued for intellectual enrichment. You could make the argument that an undergraduate degree can follow that model to some extent, as it requires broad education, but a PhD is highly specialized. Somebody with a BA in [Non-Vocational Major] will learn skills that they should be able to use in a wide variety of careers even if they never work in their major, due to general education requirements.

I'd like to point out that a Bachelors is not structured this way in all countries and all fields. I did a math degree in Canada, and the closest thing I had to "general ed" requirements were: 1) needing to either take first year English or pass it by a test, 2) take two programming classes, and 3) take X number of additional 'Science' credits on top of the math credits required for the degree. These could just come from more math classes.

 

In my opinion, a university degree shouldn't be a job prep program. This isn't a career college or program that certifies you for a specific career, and people can have many different intentions when completing the degree - indeed, some do it just for the experience, with no intention of having a career in that area. However, I'm kind of torn on the PhD issue. In some fields (such as lab based sciences), a PhD is definitely useful for pursuing a career in industry. In pure math, I'm not so sure how useful a PhD will be if I fail to have an academic career. I do think that departments should try to be more open about the academic career prospects, and have options for students to gain more industry-relevant skills as appropriate.

Edited June 29, 2015 by MathCat

[Eigen]

Responding to several different points I've seen raised:

 

First, to the original question. In STEM, I think we could easily half, it not lower, the number of PhDs without seeing a significant decrease in the quantity of work being produced. I'd also think we might see an increase in the quality of the work. It would also bring us back to a much more steady-state system in terms of the available jobs (both academic and non-academic) vs temporary positions (adjuncts and post-docs). 

 

It would also result in a significant increase in the availability of funding for graduate students as well as non-graduate researchers, and a likely increase in the salaries of permanent positions. 

 

We would be better off funding our best students at higher amounts than trying to take in more students and not funding them as well. 

 

Trying to weed it out in applications is hard, but we could easily move to a more stringent cutoff system like some of the higher ranked state schools use. Take in twice the number of graduate students you want to keep, decide at the end of the first year (qualifying exams, research proposals) which students will be kept on. Give the rest a non-thesis masters. Then you're not deciding based on arbitrary cutoffs, but giving everyone time in the same environment to prove themselves. The downside of this is a huge increase in the likelihood of backstabbing and competition in the first year cohort. 

 

To post-doctoral minimums: Those are only for post-docs on NiH funded grants. You can still be payed well below that in the same field if you're not in an NIH funded lab. In general, post-doctoral salaries are far, far too low. I'd say by 50% relative to non-academic post-doctoral positions in STEM. 

 

If you reduce the number of PhD students, you end up reducing the number of post-doctoral researchers, which leaves additional funds available for them. Additionally, in most settings, graduate students and post-doctoral researchers cost approximately the same amount per year to fund- fewer graduate students leaves more room for well funded post-doctoral positions. 

 

That said, I do agree that a post-doctoral position as a requirement has become too prevalent- it's a newer thing, and not always good. For shorter PhDs, it's beneficial to broaden the field of research and talents with a short-term position in a different lab (postdoc), but as I see them becoming broadly required and stretching for multiple years, I think it's bad for the field as a whole. 

 

On the later raised question of TT vs Adjunct positions:

 

I think moving to permanent positions is good, but people forget how many adjuncts that will "put out of business". It's good long term, but the likelihood is only about 1 out of every 3 adjuncts will wind up with a permanent TT or Professor of Practice/Instructor position, while the rest will likely need to find employment outside of academia. I think it needs to happen, but the interim will not be pretty. 

 

It will have the upside of transient teaching positions being in the VAP type role, which are meant to be transient (and usually time limited) as opposed to the adjunct position that is part-time, but not capped. At our school, any VAP kept past the 3rd year is automatically rolled into a professor of practice position. 

 

This is very field specific, but I completely disagree with the need for more graduate students in STEM- I think we could use the cut just as much as the other fields. 

[RunnerGrad]

In my discipline, there isn't a lot of adjunct/sessional labour used, because in order to maintain accreditation, a certain number/percentage of those teaching future professionals in my discipline need to be tenured and/or tenure track professors.  Too many adjuncts/sessionals/grad students teaching and not enough TT/tenured profs, and your program loses its accreditation.  Now, of course there are some adjuncts/sessionals used, because people still take maternity/parental leave (one year in Canada), go on sabbatical, retire before they can be replaced, move before they can be replaced, etc.  But it's not a huge problem.  Not a lot of people in my discipline go on to get PhDs either.  Most, at least in Canada, top out at the Master's level, because that's pretty much all you need if you want to climb the career ladder in my discipline, other than in academia.

[ballwera]

If you want to gut the number of STEM applicants, force them into getting  2 - 3 years of work experience before applying.  

Edited June 29, 2015 by ballwera

[ashiepoo72]

My field is history, and there is lots of talk about the dearth of jobs for those who complete the PhD. I think the most important thing is having the conversation about the job market before anyone enters a PhD, and at that point applicants go in with their eyes open.

I WANT a TT job, but I won't die if I don't get it at the end. I knew about the exigencies of the job market long before I applied, and I want the intellectual fulfillment of completing a PhD anyway. Does this mean I won't work my ass off, produce my best work and try to get my dream job at the end? No, of course not. But I feel that my expectations are reasonable, because I was well aware that getting a job in academia is extremely difficult.

I've worked many crappy, low-paying jobs in my life. At the end of the day, the PhD gives me 5-7 years of steady employment--yes, it's a job. Perhaps unlike most, but working as a TA and even getting paid via fellowship to do research and coursework is a job. I signed a contract stipulating I not seek outside employment because students in my program are meant to treat the PhD as their main job. The difference between this and my waitressing gigs is I'm going to develop valuable skills that I may or may not use in my field, but I WILL use them in some capacity. I have never had a job that guaranteed me employment for half a decade or more, upfront, as long as I fulfill my end of the bargain, which is making good progress to degree. Yes, if I chose a different field I could be establishing myself in a career, but in the PhD I get to do what I love for several years while getting paid and gaining skills--no other field would give me that.

The question of whether programs should cut the number of admits is interesting. Many programs are doing this--mine has over the last few years. Academia has a responsibility to graduate students to some extent, but applying to PhD programs and completing the degree is a choice made by individuals for many different reasons, and I don't think the only focus when it comes to program sizes should be the job market. People DO get PhDs for other reasons--even if the main one is the hope for an academic job. It isn't academia's place to regulate that. I do, however, think programs that do not should seriously consider only admitting students they can fund, which is a more serious problem in my opinion. It's one thing to do a PhD knowing you might not get an academic job and being okay with that, and another completely to finish a PhD with an inordinate amount of debt.

[Vene]

(emphasis added). Yes, I do think so. Assuming in your simple example that both the BS car washer and the PhD car washer will remain car washers for life (or similar career paths that don't require either degree), I would say the person with the BS is better off because they didn't spend the time in a PhD program. I also think academia (and the nation in general, as funders of academia) is better off because we didn't train a person to receive a PhD so that they can work at a car wash. (Note: This last sentence is intended as the logical consequence of my argument applied to your chosen scenario where the cutoff is at the grad school level, i.e. limiting the number of PhDs created).

I can easily accept the argument that it is a waste to train somebody to the point of a PhD who is unable to work in the field in any capacity. I'm not sure I accept the time argument as, at least in the simple scenario I gave, the 5 years spent doing a low wage job don't provide anything additional to the BS holder. If the BS holder was to get a job that is able to provide more financially or socially than living as a grad student (such as same wage, but less stress), then I could see it being a good reason.

 

I think it is a good idea to shrink the pool (but as I said above, at the postdoc level rather than grad school level) so that instead of spreading resources thinly over a large amount of people, we focus the resources on ensuring we take good care of a smaller amount of people. One tricky part, in my opinion, is where to make this divide as you don't want to make the selection too early in the pipeline. So, to modify your example to my suggestion, I would say that I think hiring a postdoc should be a bigger commitment than it is now. And that the idea is to weed out people at the postdoc application stage, so that the only people who get postdocs are the "smaller pool of people" mentioned here. That is, our community/academia should feel like the system has failed if we hired a postdoc that was then unable to be competitive for a permanent job in academia. Postdocs should be the first step of a permanent academic job, not a (potentially infinitely expanding) bridge between grad school and a permanent job.

I like your thoughts on postdocs a lot.

[Roll Right]

Man - what is with the obsession with supply and demand logic here? 

 

Its pretty sad that so many folks are willing to bar the doors to higher education in order to enhance their own access to resources (funding, jobs, etc.).

 

Its easy to claim that graduate schools should only accept the very "best and brightest" (whatever that means) after you've already been admitted to a graduate school. Did somebody say "entitlement?"

 

I prefer to think about a model of higher education that allows for greater access without limiting resources. Moving away from a neoliberal university model would be a good first step.

Edited June 29, 2015 by Roll Right

[TakeruK]

Man - what is with the obsession with supply and demand logic here? 

 

Its pretty sad that so many folks are willing to bar the doors to higher education in order to enhance their own access to resources (funding, jobs, etc.).

 

Its easy to claim that graduate schools should only accept the very "best and brightest" (whatever that means) after you've already been admitted to a graduate school. Did somebody say "entitlement?"

 

I prefer to think about a model of higher education that allows for greater access without limiting resources. Moving away from a neoliberal university model would be a good first step.

 

I like your points a lot. I would say that I don't think it's a good idea to place limits at the graduate student level, only the postdoc level, because it's hard to know when you are finishing college (for some people, around age ~22) whether or not academia is the right way to go for you. And people are still developing so it's hard to know if they are right for academia too. And I agree with the others that sometimes graduate school pays about the same as what you would be doing otherwise (except that you are gaining future career benefits).

 

I think it should be at the postdoc level, but it is reasonable for people to raise doubts about my opinion because you can argue that I might be saying this since I believe I have a strong chance of getting a postdoc. It's impossible for me to know how I would feel as a neutral third party because the reality is that none of us here are neutral parties.

 

In general though, I do think we should restrict access to X** when the resources for X is not enough. It's better for there to be fewer people doing X and treated well than to have a lot of people doing X and being mistreated. The other alternative is to increase the amount of resources so that we can have more people doing X and have them treated well. (**In this case, "X" is something like permanent academic positions or some other non essential part of our life. I'm not sure if this same pattern would apply if X was something really important, like medical doctors, higher education, or school teachers, for example).