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[quote=Anonymous]A thousand years ago, when I was an undergrad, I contemplated going for a PhD and pursuing a career in academia. I had a conversation with one of my favorite teachers, a brilliant, newly-minted PhD who I idolized -- and just happened to be in the thick of job hunting.

"Don't do it," he said. "There are no jobs. The Boomers are never going to retire, and the top schools aren't adding many jobs. You're going to get stuck at some random school in the midwest" -- just like he did, I guess. I later learned that he was hired by the University of Illinois before ending up at a university in Canada (where he was from.)

He had a point: Over the past 30 years, the number of PhDs awarded has significantly outpaced the growth in traditional, tenure-track academic teaching positions -- while Boomers have held on for a very long time in existing roles.

That's made it increasingly challenging for PhD's to find so-called "good" jobs -- but it's a boon for our kids: Well-trained, exceptionally-qualified, highly motivated, all-around-brilliant researchers and instructors are distributed at a much wider range of schools than there were when we were undergrads.

So it's not just that we were snobs then and now we're getting over it. In fact, the same pressures that making it so much harder now for kids to secure spots at the most selective schools [i]also[/i] mean better teaching, higher-quality research, and more talented peer cohorts beyond a small subset of schools, as well. [/quote]

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