In developed nations, the number of PhDs given in the sciences each year has grown by almost 40 percent since 1998, reaching about 34,000 doctorates in 2008. This type of expansion sounds great in theory: interest in the sciences is growing, and we now have a population that is more educated than ever. However, the effects of this worldwide trend are troubling. The workforce cannot absorb all these highly trained graduates, there is little money to support these expensive programs, and the quality of education is often low, among other problems. This week’s issue of Nature examines the problems with the expansive growth of the PhD.

A worldwide phenomenon

Worldwide, the plan is essentially the same: to stimulate the economy by educating the population. Increasing the number of students that pass through the higher education system isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but the resources must be there to make the system work. In much of the world, this just isn’t the case.

Japan, for example, set higher education goals in the 1990s that focused on improving its science and technology industries. Those goals have now resulted in a 6.2 percent increase in the yearly number of PhDs awarded. Unfortunately, many of those PhD holders can’t find a job; in Japan, academic jobs are few and far between. Most companies would rather hire recent college graduates who they can train on the job and pay substantially less than they would have to pay an employee with a PhD.

In 2009, the Japanese government responded by offering rewards of about 4 million yen (or $47,000) to companies willing to hire doctoral graduates. This incentive system hasn’t worked as well as the ministry of science and education had hoped: only half of Japan’s crop of 2010 PhD recipients had jobs lined up by the time they finished.

China drives a large amount of the worldwide trend, with its PhD output increasing 40 percent across all disciplines since 1998. Here, the problem isn’t getting graduates into the workforce, since China has one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Instead, the problem is that the quality of the graduates is inconsistent at best, and poor at worst. Here, the academic system hasn’t been able to cope with the huge influx of students in the past decade. Supervisors are poorly qualified to advise students, the length of the programs (about 3 years) is too short, and almost all students—even the underperforming ones—eventually graduate.

In Egypt, which leads the Middle East in PhD output, the problem is money. The number of PhD candidates in Egyptian institutions has doubled since 1998, but there just isn’t enough funding to support the system. There isn’t enough lab equipment, materials, or workspace. Low teaching salaries don’t attract qualified educators. Advisors are underpaid and overworked, and they often end up discouraging their students. The hope is that the current upheavals in the Middle East will lead to an overhaul of the education system, and correct some of these shortcomings.

Problems at home

The US is one of the largest producers of PhDs, second only to China. In life sciences and physical sciences alone, our universities bestowed nearly 20,000 doctorate degrees in 2009. Most PhD students are striving toward a tenured professorship, but academia just can’t take all these graduates. In 1973, 55 percent of PhD recipients had tenure-track positions within six years of earning their PhDs. In 2006, merely 15 percent of recent graduates found themselves in this position.

Furthermore, industries such as biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are downsizing left and right, so jobs in the private sector can’t take up the slack. One possibility for PhD holders is to spend years doing postdoctoral work, but the funding for that type of work these days just isn’t there. The other choice, which is becoming more and more common, is to take jobs that don’t require PhDs.

This new reality not only wastes intellectual talent, but also a significant amount of money. Most PhD students in the sciences (unlike those in other fields of education, such as medicine or law school) are fully funded through research assistantships, teaching opportunities, and fellowships. With so many graduates these days taking jobs they are overqualified for, some educators and economists believe this money is simply being wasted.

What can we do?

Unfortunately, there is no clear-cut answer to this series of problems. However, there are some exciting ideas that are gaining ground in graduate schools worldwide. Some institutions, such as the Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) in California, are encouraging more non-academic training in their PhD programs. KGI provides coursework and hands-on experience in patent legislation, market research, and collaboration with venture capitalists, in the hope that doctorates will be better-rounded and equipped to get off the academic track after graduation.

In a similar vein, projects such as NSF’s IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship) program seek to give PhD students more real-world experience. IGERT students spend much of their time collaborating in interdisciplinary groups, communicating with non-scientists, and learning how to use tools from one field to solve problems in another.

Finally, it may be time to encourage some young people to forgo graduate education and enter the workforce. Some companies actually prefer to hire recent college graduates—or even undergraduates—because they believe that PhD students are not well-prepared for real-world jobs. Although this point of view is still somewhat rare, and having a graduate degree does open some doors, it might be wise to encourage students to consider their options before they jump into a PhD program with dreams of a tenured professorship.

Nature, 2011. DOI: 10.1038/472276a, 10.1038/472280a, 10.1038/nj7343-381a (About DOIs).