[sjg007]

Huh? It's only zero sum in the sense that corporations and the top 1% are taking the gains. Technological progress has increase productivity in real terms and brought about new advances for what we can actually do. There also have been plenty of biotech and other engineering companies born out of the "glut" of PhDs.

Learning what not to do helps you discover what you should do and technology increase our resolution to discover scientific principles and put them to use. A PhD is an expert in research. Yes you can learn this on your own outside of academia but why? You have to put the time in anyway, may as well get the degree.

An undergraduate education prepares you for the job market whether that be graduate work, corporate work or something other activity. It may be bad at teaching automative repair, construction, plumbing, earth work, electrical work etc... but that's OK. There are other paths for that and those are not bad jobs. Even computer programming at some levels can be seen as a trade skill (wire X to Y), debug operating system. It can also be seen as a professional skill (hence the focus on algorithms/complexity etc... that we see in interviews).

At big research institutions in the sciences you get to see the future and you get to work on it or invent it. That's a nice place to be sometimes.