The PhD as Piglet

The widely acknowledged surplus of PhDs in the United States calls for action by the Federal Government. After all, it was the government that created the programs that made the surplus. Universities responded like farmers in wartime, planting acres of graduate research centers, doubling their student herds, tripling and then quadrupling their harvest of doctorates, eagerly fertilizing their instructional budgets with bribes from Washington—all while telling themselves they were acting in the national interest.

Fortunately government knows how to deal with surpluses as well as how to create them. With a Great Scholarly Depression upon us, with scientists unemployed, graduate students standing in line for Food Stamps, and sociologists about to start hurling themselves from the windows of Berkeley, the time has come for Washington to act, to formulate programs to handle the surplus just as it did in the Thirties. A government that knows what to do with extra piglets must now cope with superfluous PhDs.

About the Author

Chester E. Finn Jr.

Mr. Finn is the president emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

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The widely acknowledged surplus of PhDs in the United States calls for action by the Federal Government. After all, it was the government that created the programs that made the surplus. Universities responded like farmers in wartime, planting acres of graduate research centers, doubling their student herds, tripling and then quadrupling their harvest of doctorates, eagerly fertilizing their instructional budgets with bribes from Washington—all while telling themselves they were acting in the national interest.

Fortunately government knows how to deal with surpluses as well as how to create them. With a Great Scholarly Depression upon us, with scientists unemployed, graduate students standing in line for Food Stamps, and sociologists about to start hurling themselves from the windows of Berkeley, the time has come for Washington to act, to formulate programs to handle the surplus just as it did in the Thirties. A government that knows what to do with extra piglets must now cope with superfluous PhDs.