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: by 1970 America was producing
just under a third of the world's 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.
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%.
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.
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.