MemeStreams | The Ph.D. Problem

Students continue to check into the doctoral motel, and they don't seem terribly eager to check out.
There is a sense in which the system is now designed to produce ABDs -- graduate students who have completed all but their dissertations.
Between 1989 and 1996, the supply curve completely lost touch with the demand curve in American academic life.

From the archive, Louis Menand:

Getting a Ph.D. today means spending your 20's in graduate school, plunging into debt, writing a dissertation no one will read -- and becoming more narrow and more bitter each step of the way.

Winston Churchill:

Are we animals? Are we taking this too far?

Malcolm Gladwell:

Free is just another price ...

Decius:

Life is too short to spend 2300 hours a year working on someone else's idea of what the right problems are.

Matt Knox:

It's hard to get people to do something bad all in one big jump, but if you can cut it up into small enough pieces, you can get people to do almost anything.

Jonathan Pfeiffer:

Some of the most capable people in the post-graduate ranks feel uninspired or disempowered. They may enter graduate school full of creativity and find that after about a year, the light within them no longer burns as brightly as it once did.
Knowing exactly why this happens is difficult, but one cannot help but suspect that it has something to do with academic culture.

Richard Sennett:

The evidence suggests that from an executive perspective, the most desirable employees may no longer necessarily be those with proven ability and judgment, but those who can be counted on to follow orders and be good "team players."

Christopher J. Ferguson:

Many people like to think that any child, with the proper nurturance, can blossom into some kind of academic oak tree, tall and proud. It's just not so.

Menand's new book asks:

Has American higher education become a dinosaur?

George Friedman:

That is what happened at the CIA: A culture of process destroyed a culture of excellence.

The Ph.D. Problem