Too Many PhDs

This article was first published under the title “The Costs and Philosophy of Credentialism” in the Education Supplement of The Australian on November 25, 1998.  People in the know tell the author that the problem hasn’t changed much since then.  Other, that is, than to get enormously worse.

Last year (1997) this country produced something over 4,000* Australians with research higher degrees – people with ‘research masters’ or (mostly) PhD degrees.  It doesn’t sound too many when said quickly in the context of the need to create a clever country.  On the other hand it starts to make one think a bit when the annual direct cost to the federal purse of delivering these degrees is rather more than half-a-billion dollars, and that the annual direct cost to the community as a whole is easily more than the full billion dollars.  It also starts to make one think a bit when the wastage on the way to the degrees is getting on for 50 percent.  There were about seven or…