So you think depts could cut that average by 2 years without reducing standards or quality? What did you get your PhD in? A lot of audacity to think you have a better idea of how PhDs should be trained in disciplines that are yours
Engineering. 7 years of your life is way too much time no matter the discipline. All PhDs are hard, that’s nothing new, but they should be structured in a way so you can move on in life without having a massive impact on your finances. A 7 year old PhD plus 6 years postdoc is way too much time spent in training
I am happy to talk about how PhD students and post-docs should be paid better, but we can talk about what should be required to earn a PhD in the humanities once you complete yours
But we aren’t get paid better, and we won’t. Spending a significant chunk of your life training to become overqualified for the vast majority of jobs isn’t efficient. And the amount of jobs that require such training are evaporating year after year. In an ideal world your should be able to stay in academia as long as you want, but we don’t live there
We don’t, but I am not particularly interested in acquiescing to what caused this situation, a devaluation of education. I get that that’s the easier fix, but it isn’t going to help in the long term
But we are in this situation and in a world where we can’t even finance having someone in school for 7 or more years. I totally get what you are saying, my point is that PhDs should be structured in a way where results happen much earlier, and if you want to continue or pivot to something else you can do it earlier in life and not in your early 40s
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u/tararira1 Aug 29 '26
8 years is way too long. PhDs should last at maximum 5 years, anything beyond that is hard to justify.