1/Today in @bopinion, I discuss why America has been producing too many PhDs in recent years, and what we need to do to solve the

2/First of all, many people don't realize just how many PhDs we produce! More than almost any other rich country.
3/And we've kept ramping this number up and up.
4/But the problem begins when PhDs start looking for (usually academic) jobs.

https://t.co/M8hhoap12d
5/The U.S. built a ton of universities and then we stopped.

Professors have tenure.

That means there are just going to be fewer new tenure-track jobs than before. Everyone in academia already knows this well.
6/Here's the market for history professors.

https://t.co/sAwByQikS0
7/Here's the market for anthropology professors.

https://t.co/APb5NbB6Np
8/Here's the market for English and foreign-language professors.

https://t.co/rzzuFsoGCT
9/Now, to make matters worse, college enrollment has been flatlining. Even before COVID-19 came along and kicked colleges' butt.

https://t.co/nsbwhqaoYp
10/And colleges, under huge pressures to cut costs, have switched from tenure-track faculty to adjuncts and lecturers.
11/The life of many PhDs after graduation has thus become "adjunctopia" -- or more accurately, Adjunct Hell. Desperately hanging on year after year, hoping for that big break that never comes.

https://t.co/z9GjZkmAhB
12/Of course, PhDs can go into the private sector. BUT, many doctoral advisors push PhD students toward academia. And grad school culture stigmatizes private-sector jobs as failure...
13/Plus, while STEM PhDs and some social science PhDs can often find private-sector jobs in their fields, many humanities and social science fields don't have good private-sector analogs.

This will lead to underemployment and resentment.
14/And social unrest really is a threat here. Dashed expectations can lead to deep rage at the system. And who better equipped to overthrow the system than a bunch of brilliant underemployed people?

https://t.co/HEp0Hf5Egs
15/Some historians, like @Peter_Turchin, have warned that "elite overproduction" is a recipe for unrest.

https://t.co/23VstFoiAd
16/And the insanely shitty job market for PhDs is taking a massive psychological toll.

https://t.co/Mmuovpg3u5
17/So what do we do about this?

For STEM PhDs, we can have the government employ more. A massive expansion of federal research funding is in the works. We should pass @RoKhanna's Endless Frontier Act.

https://t.co/4Nd91Fcejr
18/But for many humanities and social science fields, a big federal bailout simply isn't in the cards. Nor is the private sector prepared to employ ever-increasing humanities and social science PhDs without severe underemployment.

We need to cut back on production.
19/Some universities are already cutting back on production in these fields.

This will be painful but necessary.

https://t.co/iK92UoN6Zd
20/We need a PhD production system that is more in line with new economic realities -- flat or declining college enrollment, cost-cutting, and the end of the 20th century college building boom.

(end)

https://t.co/o36CkgHRlU

More from We need 3 million vaccinations a day 🐇

1/I'm thinking about the end of Apu in the context of the national debates on immigration and diversity.


2/Apu's presence in Springfield represented a basic reality of America in the late 20th and early 21st century: the presence of nonwhite immigrants.

3/As Tomas Jimenez writes in "The Other Side of Assimilation", for my generation, immigrants from India, China, Mexico, and many other countries aren't strange or foreign. On the contrary, they're a

4/But that America I grew up with is fundamentally ephemeral. The kids of immigrants don't retain their parents' culture. They merge into the local culture (and, as Jimenez documents, the local culture changes to reflect their influence).

5/Simpsons character don't change. But real people, and real communities, do. So a character who once represented the diversity that immigrants brought to American towns now represents a stereotype of Indian-Americans as "permanent foreigners".
1/Lots of tech companies and workers are making noises about leaving San Francisco, LA, NYC, and other "superstar" cities.

Some are predicting a shift to remote work and distributed companies.

Let's take a hard look at what that would actually

2/We're all familiar with the trend of tech companies and other knowledge industries (finance, biotech, etc.) piling into a few tech hubs, raising rents and house prices.

Now some think the advent of Zoom, Slack, etc. might reverse this trend.

https://t.co/nQVCJrKvrB


3/But escaping the superstar cities is going to be tough.

The forces keeping tech companies in places like SF are so strong that these regions have essentially become prisons for these companies.


4/In order to escape the prison of the superstar cities, tech companies and other knowledge industries will have to overcome the Four Jailers of Industrial Clustering:

1. In-person office productivity

2. Thick market effects

3. Knowledge spillovers

4. City life amenities

5/I'm actually pretty optimistic that companies can find ways to make remote work productive.

Studies show that working from home *some* of the time actually tends to raise

More from Society

@Suman68082748 @thetwinkwolff @x_karran_x @Sunil9130 Lets stop the criticism guys. The lad is good. Losses happen. Losses to unranked players happen too. As do wins vs top 10ers. Let's accept both. Remember Sumit and the likes of him are the best we have. See the bigger picture please.

@thetwinkwolff @x_karran_x @Sunil9130 When the Europeans or South Americans were getting quality practice and tourneys week in week out at reasonable costs, our kids were playing on dung courts or learning outdated serve and volley on grass. Appreciate the fact that the last 10 years have been a hell lot better than

@thetwinkwolff @x_karran_x @Sunil9130 the 10 before that. Real change can't come in a day or even in 10 years. So let's grit our teeth and bide our time till we have an organic self sustaining system in place.

@siyer30 @SportaSmile @Cric_Writer @RomilShukla @amanthejourno

@thetwinkwolff @x_karran_x @Sunil9130 @siyer30 @SportaSmile @Cric_Writer @RomilShukla @amanthejourno Tennis is my favourite sport in the universe. Has always been. Will always be. I was in love with Steffi and Pete a lot before I fell for Sachin. And while I would love every toddler in my family to play sports professionally, I won't encourage them to pursue my favourite sport.

@thetwinkwolff @x_karran_x @Sunil9130 @siyer30 @SportaSmile @Cric_Writer @RomilShukla @amanthejourno It will be career suicide. In other sports, I can actually plan for my ward to be the next Lin Dan or the next Tiger Woods or the next Schumacher even from a base in India. With tennis, in 2020 I can't do that realistically. Just doesn't adds up. Even for total freaks of nature.

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