Bright people in Australia head into finance, medicine or law not into dead end PhDs. The problem is that universities sucker too many into PhD programs for the sake of the departmental government funding. This leads to indiscriminate entry into virtually all the PhD programs in Australia. When they graduate they are often underemployed or unemployed.
The ultimate harm to society is the production of research slop that worsens the SN ratio in published work.
> do more interesting and valuable work
It depends what you find interesting. Research is very interesting to a lot of poeple.
PhDs have the lowest unemployment rate of any education bracket, and roughly match the earnings of professional-degree holders (e.g. MBAs) [1].
[1] https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2025/data-on-display/educa...
As an example, an Ivy graduate makes more than state school graduate on average, but there was a study showing that those offered Ivy admission but deciding to go to a state school made just as much (that study setup has its own selection bias issues, but hopefully those gives an idea of what I mean).
We're literally measuring a selection effect: that of pursuing a graduate degree.
> there was a study showing that those offered Ivy admission but deciding to go to a state school made just as much
Source?
I'm not rejecting the hypothesis that this is a measurement error. But it's been observed across multiple countries for several generations. The burden of proof is on the hot take that graduate degrees in general are a bad economic bet. (Note: I don't have a PhD. I went to a state school. So you're hypothesis is tempting to believe, hence my scepticism.)
Yes, that's what I meant by 'doing research': People really have deep passion for it - knowledge, being on the frontier of it and generating new knowledge.
biglyburrito•1mo ago