Time rich, money poor: Why graduates are abandoning flawed PhD system

The veterans who survived and now prosper think the next generation should have to suffer for science like they did Image: iStock

Here’s the deal. You want to cure cancer and then save the planet. So, a professor agrees to supervise your PhD. What they may mention, but only quietly, is that you will work day and night and then some for three or four years while being paid not much. A government scholarship is $34,000 a year (albeit tax-free). You can earn some more by teaching at your uni – except it eats time and casual classes do not pay much either.

When you finish your thesis, you have knowledge and skills that equip you to start your life’s work in the lab, except your chance of finding a full-time job is somewhere between buckleys and none. Your professor isn’t going anywhere and when jobs do open up, they attract desperate scientists from all over. A great career choice research is not, especially given Universities Australia reports the average PhD student is 37 years old, so it is no surprise fewer people are on the path.

Postgraduate (doctorates and masters combined) research enrolments are not keeping up with economic and population growth. There were 6600 people enrolled in natural and physical science higher degrees in 2001, and 8600 in 2023. At the start of the century, there were 900 higher degree students in IT, and 1200 two decades on. Research in agriculture is dying on the vine, from 1700 then to 1100 now. Even in the humanities and social sciences, people with research interests so irrelevant to the market economy that only a university would ­employ them seem to be taking the hint. There were 10,000 research postgrads 20 years ago, there are 9000 now.

A big part of the problem is the PhD as a product, not what starting scientists know how to do. The Academy of Science warns that domestic enrolments in many science PhD programs are declining, “even as demand for scientific capability grows”. The Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations points out its members are the “backbone” of the research ­workforce – their projects are regularly part of a team effort and they are way cheaper than a regular staff member.

Some universities kick in a few thousand dollars on top of the public PhD scholarship, but Tony Peacock and colleagues from the Marine Products Cooperative Research Centre stand out, having announced they would pay their PhD students a modest living wage, $60,000 a year. “You don’t build a multibillion-dollar industry on cheap labour. We are about attracting the best talent and letting them focus fully on research,” he says. Most university employers won’t follow – it is not how the PhD hierarchy works. Merlin Crossley, who combines being a deputy vice-chancellor at the University of New South Wales with co-leading a genetics research laboratory there, approvingly argues the PhD training system is “basically the age-old master/apprentice model”.

Plus, a trial by ordeal. “Most students complete their PhDs, but at the time it is always a big deal, and confronting one’s demons and delivering a thesis makes students stronger,” Crossley says.

The veterans who survived and now prosper think the next generation should have to suffer for science like they did. As Peacock puts it, “get professors talking about their PhD experiences and they sound like Monty Python’s four old men whining about how hard their lives were (as in ‘luxury! We lived for three months in a rolled-up newspaper in a septic tank’)”. The older and wise do not ­always respond well to suggestions. Warwick Anderson, sometime head of the National Health and Medical Research Council once suggested there were not enough jobs for all the PhDs the research system turned out, and copped criticism for discouraging students.

So, we have a doctoral system which won’t transform while it can trade on prestige. “One of the key reasons for doing a doctoral research degree or PhD is to pursue an academic career,” Sam Hoang (Victoria University) and colleagues warn. As Li’An Chen and Australian National University collaborators report on the “PhD crisis discourse”, while people with doctorates do OK in the general job market, there is a common assumption that not being an academic means they failed.

Plus, government has long given the old, rich, research-focused universities some of what they want (all would be the commonwealth budget plus one). Big chunks of funding are tied to PhD enrolments, creating incentives to enrol as many people as possible and regret that those who don’t make it just lacked the right stuff.

As for declining numbers overall, it is, quelle surprise, the government’s fault for paying a scholarship base rate, just above the poverty line. Universities Australia calls for an increased stipend “to reflect a realistic cost of living” without offsetting the cost by reducing student numbers.

This all assumes the more PhDs the better, which ignores the waste of public money and personal time for people whose careers take them away from what they studied. People with PhDs who succeed outside universities generally do so because they are smart and disciplined, not because they produced a thesis on a very, very specific topic. A dissertation is a very expensive signal for anybody to send, especially if employers don’t understand what it is about. As for the arts faculty argument that those who attain a PhD have learned critical-thinking skills, that’s the claim made for ­undergraduates – making four more of years of study a bad case of diminishing returns.

Some universities get this, that be it public or private sector, doctoral graduates need to start work with job-ready knowledge and skills. There are half a dozen with PhD-student placement programs, some an academically ­elevated model of the “degree apprenticeship model” where students combine classes with regular work, developing specific skills. But overall, a PhD is like a trade ticket that certifies the bearer is a member of a university guild with demonstrable research – but not, which is a different problem, teaching skills.

There can be doctoral degrees which are awarded on coursework and articles about applied research for industries as broadly or narrowly defined as universities can find a market for. But they won’t replace the traditional lab or library-based PhD research project without a culture change that is not in sight.

As Crossley puts it, “at present, PhDs stand out uniquely as training grounds where students truly demonstrate their independence and are then judged by independent examiners”. The problem is when nobody apart from the authors and hopefully supervisors and markers understands it.

“I remember one of my student’s thesis title was read out in a speech at his wedding,” Crossley once wrote, “it got a good laugh but did not capture the importance of his work – we should have done better”.