I'm surprised this hasn't been posted yet...
Economist: PhD Not Worth It
(46 posts) (2 voices)-
Posted 2 years ago #
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PhDs: Big Freaking Surprise.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Just trying to ward off pre-Christmas depression and suicide.
Posted 2 years ago # -
"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."
I often fantasize about taking my free masters degree and jumping ship.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Not to gloat, but I feel like my job is actual work about six days a year. I wonder how many people can say that about thier job. This doesn't address the author's central point, but goes s long way to explaining why rational people make the decision to pursue academic jobs.
Posted 2 years ago # -
^ I assume those six days encompass the end of semester grading binges? I generally agree with seriously. Sure a PhD makes little financial sense. But when you add quality of life to the utility side of the model (which economists don't do...) the decision is more rational. My only quibble: the implication that rational people pursue academic jobs. I have met very few rational people in academia... :-)
Posted 2 years ago # -
I don't know why people are so amazed by this...academia needs a tournament structure to ensure that the best and brightest get matched with top jobs. "Oversupply of Ph.D.'s" is simply the other side of that coin. Yes it is too bad for those who don't make it to their hoped for destination, but the system is not designed to maximize individual satisfaction, it is designed to maximize scholarly quality. That it is so unbelievably satisfying to those lucky few who not only get through but get to the top is just a side benefit.
Posted 2 years ago # -
And yes I know it's common to say "academia is not a meritocracy." There are some margins where this is true. But for the most part, it is a meritocracy, and enough merit will trump any difference on any other margin (thankfully), including race and gender. There are plenty of hacks in decent jobs because of other margins besides merit that matter, but few-no really good people don't get jobs. "It's not a meritocracy" is the battle cry of the losers.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Certainly the academic labor market is not the perfect clearing market of econ 101, but I don't recall anything in these lectures that would suggest that a "tournament" would produce better outcomes. Whatever its shortcomings, laying 50 or so cv's side-by-side does much to identify the meritorious.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Suppose 50 people get Ph.D.'s and then they all get jobs.
Now suppose 150 people get Ph.D.'s and the the top 50 get jobs.
Which one of these approaches will lead to higher quality of the 50 people who get jobs?
FlyOverProf thumbs through an intro Micro book and comes up blank.
Posted 2 years ago # -
^ Ummmm... I think you missed flyoverprof's point. As far as I can tell, he or she wasn't attacking your underlying logic regarding surplus of supply to insure quality. The thrust of the argument was that a tournament structure (applicants should be paired in series of head to head matches, with the job going to the top candidate) is unnecessary. So your responses are unwarranted.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Pairwise comparisons!?! What are you? A douche??
Posted 2 years ago # -
^ Maybe. I am not suggesting pairwise comparison, but that is the essence of a tournament structure, which was promulgated by anon. And I was just interpreting what flyoverprof said, since it was apparent that the reading comp skills for anon were not being fully utilized today, and that failure had led to a miscommunication, which led to an unjustified invective. In other words, I was only doing then what I am doing now.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Except that the oversupply of PhD students is not driven by a desire to create a "tournament structure" (or whatever0 for the employment market. It's driven by the need for cheap labor to fill staffing needs for teaching and research purposes. The oversupply of PhDs on the job market is an unintended (and, for many, undesired) consequence.
Posted 2 years ago # -
^ Yep.
Posted 2 years ago # -
> Except that the oversupply of PhD students is not driven by a desire to create a "tournament structure" (or whatever0 for the employment market. It's driven by the need for cheap labor to fill staffing needs for teaching and research purposes.
Stupid political scientists. Who cares why it exists? The question is about what it does.
Tell you what, you judge an institution by its intentions, I'll judge it by its consequences. Then you can complain about how no one takes you seriously or gives a **** what you say.
Posted 2 years ago # -
> The thrust of the argument was that a tournament structure (applicants should be paired in series of head to head matches, with the job going to the top candidate) is unnecessary.
Unnecessary to do what? Identify the best members of a given pool? No **** it is unnecessary to do that.
And what about the talent and quality level of those best members? The larger the surplus, the higher it is in expectation.
I dearly hope you idiots don't get paid real money to do this, as you are the best conceivable counterargument to my thesis - much better than your pitiful attempts at logic. To wit, even if you are the best available, you are sufficiently stupid that, socially, we shouldn't bother. The world would have been better off if you'd become messenger girls.
Posted 2 years ago # -
It's a good thing he did this study so that now we know. lol... social scientists are so ridiculous!
If anyone goes into a PhD program thinking it will be "worth it," he's an idiot. It's a passion, not a career move.
Posted 2 years ago # -
He?
You are aware that "the economist" is not a person, right?
Posted 2 years ago # -
No wonder the market fundamentalists at the Economist assume that there is no worth in anything besides money. What's there to discuss?
Posted 2 years ago # -
you guys are funny, anon is from econ?
Posted 2 years ago # -
You try to think about things from a social standpoint and the mush-brained Europhile left that treats academia as a jobs program is all over you. You people deserve each other. I deserve better.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Paranoid much? I never criticized that part of your argument. Neither did flyover prof. In fact, we agreed with that part of your argument. We (along with Douche) just criticized one of the implications of your tournament analogy--that there are somehow pairwise comparisons of job applicants in academia. Since the hiring process is not like that, you were (justly?) criticized. I added some sarcasm in part because you failed to realize this, and in part b/c you responded in like kind.
In end, I do think you deserve better ... than being called an economist. That was just down right cruel.
Posted 2 years ago # -
I'm insightful !!!!
Posted 2 years ago # -
Pairwise comparisons equal sub optimal outcomes you douches!!!
Posted 2 years ago # -
Pairwise comparisons equal sub optimal outcomes you douches!!!
Posted 2 years ago # -
I'm helping!!
Posted 2 years ago # -
a key tournament aspect of academic employment is the insensitivity of wages and work demands to the quality of the best applicant. it has nothing to with binary comparisons. "Top K of N get prize worth X" is a canonical tournament mechanism. markets aren't tournaments in the sense that the K and N are determined endogenously, whereas classical tournaments assume that K and (possibly) N are fixed a priori.
Posted 2 years ago # -
The global over supply in Phd's is pretty easy to explain - too many post-graduates chasing too few high status well paid academic jobs. One thing is for sure - you will not get a chance of any of those jobs without a Phd but contacts count just as much. We can expect a global explosion of Higher Education in the next ten years and for academics who are prepared to travel there should be enormous opportunities to seed new research faculties throughout the developing world.But if you just want to make lots of money then you are probably better off doing something else.
Posted 2 years ago #