The current job market in the United States has many questioning the value of a doctoral degree. Critics have argued that PhD programs exploit student labor, don’t prepare you for jobs outside academia, and exaggerate job placement statistics. These views have been largely driven by two factors: an increase in PhD graduates and a decrease in tenure-track faculty positions.
The New York Times summarizes the secenario well:
All of this resulted in a severe misalignment of supply and demand. Universities had spent the better part of two decades training more people for jobs that universities simultaneously decided they didn’t need, just as economic, demographic and legal conditions began further depressing the need for professors. It’s no wonder that many humanities majors are using their considerable creative and rhetorical skills to liken their job searches to various post-apocalyptic imaginings.
In order to investigate this problem further, I’ve decided to create a doctoral outcome dashboard by compiling data from the National Science Foundation. Feel free to explore the dashboard below!