The Future of ___ PhD
Fill-in the blank in the title of this post with a name of scientific discipline of choice. Nov 1 issue of NYT features a piece “The Repurposed Ph.D. Finding Life After Academia — and Not Feeling Bad About It”. The gloomy state of affairs described in the article mostly applies to humanities and social sciences, at least in the U.S., but I’m sure it applies to other countries as well. I’m sure it does to Poland too. More and more people are entering the job market with a PhD (at least in Poland as evidence shows). At the same time, available positions are scarce and the pays are low. It is somewhat heart-warming to know that people are self-organizing into groups like “Versatile Ph.D” to support each other in such difficult situation.
The article links to several interesting pieces including the “The Future of the Humanities Ph.D. at Stanford” discussing the ways of modifying humanities PhD programs so that humanities training will remain relevant in the society and economy of today. Definitely a worthy read for higher education administrators and decision makers in Poland.
