The problem with a vast majority of these Doom and Gloom articles about grad school is that they implicitly lump in all subjects together. The subtitle on this site at least says "its focus is on the humanities and social sciences," but I for one find subtitles easy to overlook. There is a vast difference in employability, debt, and time-to-completion of a Science/Engineering PhD (comparatively High, Low, and Short, respectively) compared to a Social Science/Humanities PhD. I would suspect that most HN readers considering grad school would be pursuing technical degrees anyways (unless they're going after MBAs, which are a totally different class).
Did you just characterize a science/engineering Ph.D.'s time to completion as "Short"? Or am I reading that incorrectly?
Maybe if you're a theorist, or if you choose a fortunate field, but at Cornell the average experimental physics Ph.D. used to take 5 or 6 years. 7 was not at all rare, and it was not hard to find someone who had been around for 8. Meanwhile, most of the EE Ph.Ds I know took at least 5 years.
All the linked articles in "further reading" are about graduate school in the humanities. Does that mean that it doesn't apply to science, engineering, and business, or that it does, but humanities is just an easier target?
I just got a Master's in engineering and I rejected funding to continue on into the PhD because I could not see myself continue for 4 to 5 more years of the same. I'm looking at jobs right now and of course I'd guess that most places don't really care that I have a Masters since most of the positions available are unrelated to my specialized field. PhD's are far too specialized and it seems there is little collaboration with industry. I'm starting to think that if you don't have a job lined up by the time you graduate your chances are cut in half.
The problems are severe and fairly widespread across academia, although the liberal arts (including the sciences) may be worse off than professional programs (with the exception of law, which also suffers from degree overproduction and a tight job market).
