1) The system only trains PhDs for academic research.
There's lots of research jobs in industry and government, and a PhD is excellent preparation for them. Who else but a PhD-trained researcher would know enough to be able to run the research programs at Intel or Genentech? Come to think of it, who but a PhD-trained researcher would know enough to be able to start a company like Intel or Genentech?
Many large corporations have decreased their investment in pure R&D. (Intel just closed its Berkeley research lab [1].) Yes, PhDs can make great contributions in industrial and gov't settings, but they are certainly not trained with those applications in mind. In most fields, professors are producing new academics.
Yes, PhDs can make great contributions in industrial and gov't settings, but they are certainly not trained with those applications in mind.
I'm not sure what it means to be "trained as a professor" rather than "trained as an industrial/government researcher", because I don't think I've ever been trained as either.
Certainly (and this is actually a problem) there isn't enough training of PhD students in key professorial skills such as "how to teach a class" or even "how to write a research grant" -- this is something which freshly-minted professors have to figure out on their own.
1) The system only trains PhDs for academic research.
There's lots of research jobs in industry and government, and a PhD is excellent preparation for them. Who else but a PhD-trained researcher would know enough to be able to run the research programs at Intel or Genentech? Come to think of it, who but a PhD-trained researcher would know enough to be able to start a company like Intel or Genentech?