The system of PhD education in the United States and many other countries is broken and unsustainable, and needs to be reconceived. In many fields, it creates only a cruel fantasy of future employment that promotes the self-interest of faculty members at the expense of students. The reality is that there are very few jobs for people who might have spent up to 12 years on their degrees.

Most doctoral-education programmes conform to a model defined in European universities during the Middle Ages, in which education is a process of cloning that trains students to do what their mentors do. The clones now vastly outnumber their mentors. The academic job market collapsed in the 1970s, yet universities have not adjusted their admissions policies, because they need graduate students to work in laboratories and as teaching assistants. But once those students finish their education, there are no academic jobs for them.

If doctoral education is to remain viable in the twenty-first century, universities must tear down the walls that separate fields, and establish programmes that nourish cross-disciplinary investigation and communication. They must design curricula that focus on solving practical problems, such as providing clean water to a growing population. Unfortunately, significant change is unlikely to come from faculty members, who all too often remain committed to traditional approaches. Students, administrators, trustees and even people from the public and private sectors must create pressure for reform. It is important to realize that problems will never be solved as long as each institution continues to act independently.

The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying ­ lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.

But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting #ed by a system that threw them overboard 30 #ing years ago.

You know what they want? Obedient workers ­ people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly #tier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your #ing retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this #ing place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club.

RIP Mr. Carlin

Originally posted by Kaiketsu
reply to post by Mayson

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I just earned my PhD, and in a field that is extremely unique - I'm one of about 15 people in the country with this degree. I'll suffice it to say that it's a specific application of education.

I had to fight tooth and nail to maintain my independence. Many times I was told to "cooperate to graduate." I refused. My committee threatened to fail me. I dared them. They made me take every exam twice, trying to make me sweat the second one because it could be my last. I called the bluff.

And through all of it, I FINALLY learned critical thinking, argumentation, and logic. Not directly though - I learned it through Facebook debate (!) and had to apply it in my PhD. I got them back for it though, as embedded in my dissertation is a message of liberty and a denouncement of the NWO agenda.

So, why did I do it? #1 - so I could teach anywhere. Not a good reason to do a PhD, btw.

But to the challenge from the OP - what's the drive for more PhD's? Besides the fact that it looks good to have more PhD's (a more educated populace), this is the key: PhD's go to work ON PUBLIC DOLLARS. We are essentially govt employees. We apply for govt grants to do mundane things that we should have done decades ago, and the school gets about 50% in overhead, so they love it too.

In other words, the system is feeding itself. I do it to help students, as I teach liberty, critical thinking, etc. Most do it to sustain themselves - build a name, get big $, live comfortably.