From time to time, Robert Reich (former Secretary of Labor for Clinton) has an opinion piece on the NPR show Marketplace.
During yesterday’s show, he commented on the usefulness grad degrees:
Applications to law schools, business schools, medical schools and Ph.D. programs continue to rise, but as commentator Robert Reich says, college grads may be making a big mistake. “If you think another degree is worth the extra cost because it will win you a better-paying job when the economy turns up, think again,” says Reich. Since the economy went sour, grad schools have been flooded, but demand for graduates has cooled. […]
The short summary really doesn’t describe his commentary very well, and the full audio version is similar but not exactly as the description would lead you to believe. (The description makes it seem like he’s saying that a low-end job is a better idea than going for a grad degree, but most of what he’s saying focuses on the current demand for grad degrees vs the demand for undergraduate degrees.)
Let’s discount stupid grad degrees (Law, Med, and MBAs) and talk about PhDs now. What percentage of people in PhD programs pay for them? No one at MIT.
And you must also ask why do people do PhDs. Some people do Masters for money–I’m doing one to get a job that I’ll be happy doing–but I don’t think people do PhDs for money; they do PhDs because they want to learn, to think abstractly about their subject, to do high level research with brilliant faculty, to prepare to be professors and so on. But it’s just like an economist to suggest that everything come down to money.