The Wall Street Journal reports:
Jake Simson, a biomedical engineer turned financial analyst, stood in front of a group of doctoral candidates in a University of Chicago lecture hall this past semester explaining how to find a job.
First step? Don’t be hung up on staying in the academy.
“There is hope,” he said.
Mr. Simson’s encouragement is part of a conversation taking place across dozens of research universities that is aimed at preparing doctoral candidates entering the job market for a jarring reality: Their Ph.D. doesn’t deliver the bang for the buck it once did.
The percentage of new doctorate recipients without jobs or plans for further study climbed to 39% in 2014 from 31% in 2009, according to a National Science Foundation survey released in April. Median salaries for midcareer Ph.D.s working full time fell 6% between 2010 and 2013.
The reason: supply and demand. Production of doctorates in the U.S. climbed 28% in the decade ending in 2014 to an all-time high of 54,070. That surge has come as more Americans see a postgraduate degree as a hedge against stagnating wages and unemployment in an economy demanding increasingly specific skills and expertise.
Meanwhile, the academic job market—the largest employer of Ph.D.s—continues to wither as many universities move away from the model of only employing tenured professors and toward using greater numbers of relatively lowly paid adjunct teachers.
There's more:
As a result, many graduate students are considering careers outside the academy or their research field. This has led to credential inflation as Ph.D.s fill jobs traditionally held by professionals without such lofty degrees. For instance the number of Ph.D.s applying to teach at private high schools has jumped between 10% and 20% over the last five years, according to Devereaux McLatchey, president of Carney, Sandoe & Associates which is one of the nation’s largest recruiters for private high schools.
See what happens when the federal government subsidizes people to go to college?
