Laura McK continues to ponder academic career patterns. In drawing the comparison between Ph.D.s and M.D.s, she notes:

The AMA has done a far better job protecting doctors from flooding the markets. Paul Starr’s book [The] Social Transformation of American Medicine relates how the AMA purposely regulates the numbers entering medical school in order to keep the demand for doctors high and thus guarenteeing them higher salaries. Academics should learn from their example.

Arguably, the bar exam has similar (but weaker) effects on the legal profession. However, I wonder about the morality of turning away someone who wants to earn a Ph.D. in the name of “protecting academics from flooding the markets.” Unlike law and medicine, an academic degree isn’t solely a gateway to a profession, and unlike those fields, there’s no overarching body that can be an effective gateway to discourage free riding. (Good luck trying to get accrediting boards to decertify Ph.D. programs that don’t limit intake.)

The central drawback is more that a lot of people earn Ph.D.s who’d probably be happy doing something else, but they’re 22 and not ready for the “real world,” for whatever reason. But the incentive structure is such that academic departments want to have students around—they help with recruiting and retaining faculty by improving departmental prestige, provide cheap labor for teaching and research, and attract resources from the university administration. On the other hand, it’s hard to make a case for turning away—or worse, failing out—students who are qualified, and I think good programs do, in fact, warn students coming in that they may not get a job. (One former faculty member at Ole Miss is famous for his “Bull Durham” speech, which has struck fear in the heart of many a grad student—including this one.) And that is laying aside the tenure issue, which I’ve seen chew up a number of promising scholars at varying institutions—due to the vagaries of publishing, departmental and administration politics, and other issues.

I don’t know that I have any good or easy answers here. After all, I’m just starting out (heck, I still have to defend on Tuesday—and I’ve got work to do before and after that). Maybe there’s something to be said for adding more value to the terminal master’s, reserving the Ph.D. for those who want to pursue a research-track career. I honestly don’t know.