[TimPC]

Overproducing PhDs seems to be a necessary aspect of how research is conducted in the current university. Most serious lines of work are pursued by a PhD student or Postdoc and advised by a Professor. They need a critical mass of PhD students which is definitely a much larger number than 1 per professorship. This is especially true in fields where industry jobs aren't readily available.

[msg3]

I think that's a huge part of the problem though - we've made it so the only way we can get research done is by training a new researcher - even though there's already plenty of trained researchers who are struggling to find a decent job.

I'm suggesting that we re-direct some of the funding for training PhD students into funding for postdoctoral positions (via either fellowships or research grants). Professors would still get their research team, but rather than consisting mostly of untrained PhD students, they'd have a smaller, but more effective team of trained researchers.

[oldnews193]

Isn't that the case simply because professors are expected to be highly productive, to the extent where it is not possible to meet the bar without offloading the work to students and switching to a full-time manager?