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I went into a PhD programme in Australia straight out of my undergrad degree, and while it certainly wasn't great for my financial security, I'm glad I did it. Anecdotes don't make data, of course, but this is background to what follows. I had a really easy time getting admitted to the program, was fully funded and received a scholarship. I had a lot of freedom in terms of topic and got to travel every year of the PhD, so I think the actual experience was much better than it sounds like other people have it in the linked study. What I did see, however, was a university system that was pushing through students at what I would consider an irresponsible pace. This was especially the case with foreign students, who were fodder for the supervisors' career aspirations (the supervisors having to see through a number of students to completion per five-year period to advance). The quality of the resultant PhDs was shockingly low in some cases, but there is no incentive for good theses, just complete theses. And for a university system like Australia's, which is to a large degree reliant on exporting education, these incentives are probably far worse now than they were when I was in the midst of it in 2015-16. The other major problem is that a PhD is, essentially, an apprenticeship for academia. In Australia, we have a apprenticeships in trades (like electrical, plumbing, etc.) in which you learn 'on the job'; you're paid poorly, you do the menial jobs, but at the end you have a career. A PhD is like that: you do almost everything a lecturer or professor does, except -- and here's the catch -- there's no job prospects whatsoever at the end. And it seems like it'll get worse. Imagine working for four years on something that you love, that you're passionate about, and that you think will change the world intellectually, to only end up being some cheap labour to get publications for others more advanced in their careers -- and then you're done, and shown the door. I was incredibly lucky in that I got a two-year postdoc, but I had to change fields (which I wanted to do), and I ended up paying for my own post-doc doing contracted research through the university. My heart wasn't in being an academic, and the applied side appealed to me a lot -- but I imagine this would be intolerable for many candidates. These are factors I tell anyone who is thinking of a PhD. It is a highly-specific apprenticeship for a single industry that is, in Australia, collapsing substantially as the result of its own mismanagement, poor education funding policy at the Federal level, and (of course) the pandemic. It's no wonder that PhD candidates are so discontent, in my view -- despite my having had a wonderful and very fulfilling time. |