Problems With the PhD

¶ … Dr. Dole Queue

It might seem that having too much education, like being too rich or too thin, is impossible to achieve. However, according to Adrian Wooldridge's article "Doctor Dole Queue," that is precisely what is happening to a generation of PhD students. After a certain point, there is a diminishing level of returns for the student in regards to getting degree after degree. And certain degrees, such as a PhD in English literature, can actually make the job-seeker less employable, given the lack of utility of the degree in fields outside of academia and the opportunity cost of time and money to get a PhD. Wooldridge primarily uses facts and statistics to illustrate his point, underlining the discrepancy that exists between the claim that 'more education is good' versus the reality that exists for most students in the real world.

In the first paragraph of his essay, Wooldridge states that he believes that a generation of people with PhDs is being created with massive student loans and poor employment prospects. Wooldridge counters the argument that 'more education is better' by taking it to its logical, absurd conclusion through the use of examples and illustrations: he states eventually PhDs will be touted as mandatory for all students in post-industrial economies, just like secondary education is considered the minimal education standard for entering the workplace. The absurdity of this vision underlines a serious point he is making, namely the uselessness of a PhD for the majority of the degree's current recipients.

In the second paragraph, Wooldridge summons up a great deal of sobering evidence in support of this thesis, namely the crushing levels of debt of PhD students in fields such as English literature possess and the fact that so many PhD holders are employed in low-paying fields that do not even require a college education. The education is so narrow and specialized it cannot be transferred into other types of useful professional work. Of course, there is always the argument that getting a PhD can prepare someone for academia, but tenured positions are difficult to obtain -- Wooldridge points out that many PhDs who do teach only do so as contracted, temporary employees with no benefits and very poor pay. Quite simply, the hard, cold facts do not support the emphasis on graduate study as particularly useful -- at least for highly specialized PhDs in the humanities. Because that is the one, central problem with Wooldridge's analysis: he makes a persuasive case that statistically an English PhD is not a worthy investment -- but his claims that an MBA because it is so disconnected from reality is equally useless is more suspect since he offers no evidence that a person's career or financial prospects tend to suffer after getting an MBA or other, more useful degrees. Furthermore, a PhD in chemical or petroleum engineering cannot be analogized to an English PhD in terms of its applicability to the workforce and Wooldridge is curiously silent about the 'uselessness' of these degrees.