A friend of my forwarded me this article The Ph.D. Glut Revisited . Reading through one had to agree with what the author had to say that since the 1970's " The number of entry-level full-time professorial positions has remained stagnant. Few new universities have been constructed." , but the number of PhDs passing out each year is on the rise. Ok so this article was pretty harsh ending with a word to the wise - "If the public understood the economics of earning a Ph.D., people would think "naïve economic loser" whenever they hear "Ph.D."" and reading it indeed cause many to wonder their paths (ok including me). But then I think we also need to re-evaluate the article according to individual circumstance. Take for example my uni and department- where 90% of the post grads seem to be scholars and earn equal or more than their industry counter-parts when you consider the stipends and GA salaries. And in an engineering field there is always opportunity in the R&D industry even if you don't go down the professorial track so I guess its a bit of a different situation that that portrayed by the article.
Nevertheless I think we should always consider why we want to do this before embarking on such a long comittment. Last month when my sup asked us what was the reason you all wanted to do a PhD there were a lot of varied answers ranging from "I didn't want to leave school" to "Fulfilling my parents dreams" and we realized we needed to be more motivated than these empty reasons if we realy intend to complete it. I see my seniors down in the dumps sometimes when their experiments refuse to yield anything or when their papers get rejected and you realy need some purpose to keep going through those times. I do hope I will have the strength when my turn comes around.
