[barumi]

> But in academia, and I suppose in a criminal gang, everyone has the same skillset. PhDs are notionally being trained with the specific abilities necessary to become a professor.

They really aren't. First of all, scientifically speaking each PhD is unique as it focuses on specific venues of research. Thus within the same research group you often have an extremely diverse crowd doing independent research on multiple projects at the same time.

Then there's the fact that the assertion about "being trained (...) to become a professor" makes no sense. PhD students are trained to conduct independent research on a specific subject, and rarely also on how to apply to research grants. Being a professor, which is more of a supervisor/administrator role, is not factored into the equation, and the teaching component is a very small and tangential aspect of being a professor.

The truth of the matter is that graduate schools are effectively diploma mills to entice prospective workers to work long hours for low wages in exchange for a qualification and shot at a research career. Their work is focused on learning how to do research while focusing on a specialized topic, which arguably has no parallel with what a professor does.