Posted on 08/18/2005 5:04:35 PM PDT by bloggodocio
The number of Americans earning doctoral degrees has declined in recent years, renewing worries that the United States is losing its dominance in Ph.D.-level education to rapidly developing nations like China and India.
The National Center for Education Statistics recently reported that 44,160 Ph.D.s were awarded by U.S. universities in 2002, down from the high-water mark of 46,010 doctorates awarded in 1998.
All other education degrees are up dramatically.
The Census Bureau reported that the number of Americans who obtained a bachelor's degree increased from 32 million in 1990, or 20 percent of the population then, to more than 44 million in 2000 _ 24 percent of the population. Master's and professional degrees have also increased significantly.
But only 1 percent of Americans had earned Ph.D.s as of 2000, a figure expected to decline slightly since awarded doctorates are not matching population growth.
Census officials reported that there were slightly more than 1.7 million Americans with Ph.D.s as of 2000.
Meanwhile, other nations are ratcheting up their doctoral programs. The National Bureau of Economic Research has predicted that by 2010 China will surpass the United States in the number of science and engineering Ph.D.s conferred.
"The numbers I've seen from the National Science Foundation show a trajectory that Asia will, in a very short time, produce more Ph.D.s than the United States," said education researcher Heath Brown. "India has pledged to have a sixfold increase in the number of advanced degrees it awards."
The United States in 1970 produced more than half of the world's Ph.D.s. But if current patterns continue, the United States will be lucky to produce just 15 percent of the world's doctorates by 2010.
"We don't know exactly why this is happening. But we do know that there are financial issues involved, including the increased debt burden that American students are facing," said Debra Stewart, president of the Washington-based Council of Graduate Schools.
The median amount of debt incurred by students seeking doctoral degrees has increased from $11,500 in 1992 to $44,743 in 2003, a more rapid increase than for any other category of college student.
"These debt levels are likely to prove burdensome to many recent doctorate earners and may dissuade some from pursuing careers in academe," said Jacqueline King, director of the American Council on Education's Center for Policy Analysis.
American students may also be discouraged by the increasingly uncertain labor market for Ph.D. recipients.
"Is there really a viable non-academic job market for someone with a doctorate in English? I'm not sure we've done such a wonderful job explaining to students the range of things they can do with a Ph.D.," said Stewart.
She said that many doctoral programs have low completion rates. Only about 40 percent of Ph.D. candidates in the humanities finish, compared with a 75 percent completion rate for doctoral candidates in the biological sciences.
Census officials also found that Americans with doctorates are not evenly distributed throughout the nation. Los Angeles County has the nation's largest concentration of Ph.D.s, with 58,852 , followed by Chicago's Cook County with 33,501 and Middlesex County, Mass., with 32,025.
Those with doctorates account for 1 percent of the adult populations in Los Angeles County and Cook County, but represent nearly 3 percent in Middlesex County, home to most of the academics employed at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other major academic centers.
But the Boston area does not have America's highest population proportion of Ph.D.s, according to Census officials. That honor goes to Los Alamos County, N.M., where 16 percent of the population has a doctorate, due to the more than 2,000 Ph.D.s employed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The facility conducts research for the nation's nuclear weapons and energy programs.
There are 140 counties in the United States that do not have any doctoral-degree recipients.
The U.S. Department of Education reported that there were 6,967 degrees awarded for education in 2002, the most for any academic field, followed by 5,195 degrees conferred in engineering and 4,489 awarded for biological and life sciences. Advanced degrees for English and literature have been on the decline, dropping to 1,446 recipients in 2002, down from its record of 1,672 recipients in 1976.
PhD = Playa Hater Degree! Yeaaaaa Boiiiiii!!!!!
Is this a bad thing????
Well, I intended to get a PhD in History, but wound up with an MBA instead.
"Piled hip Deep"
If only they'd stop giving out 4-year degrees so indiscriminantly, that would be nice too.
PhD = Post hole Digger
Yes. For the technological and scientific future of the country, it is a bad thing.
Having said that, and being a former English & history major myself, I don't know why people get PhDs in these areas anymore. The fields are terrifically overcrowded and wages in them are low.
In my field, there are still jobs and the wages are high. In addition, almost everyone is completely funded, so there is little doctoral debt (that happens at the lower levels). Worse comes to worse, I can take my PhD to industry. Hard to do that w/a doctorate in early 17th century Englsih women writers.
Piled higher and Deeper...with colleges run by the type of people who work there, what attraction could there be to competing with those type of people for a limited number of tenure track positions?
Having escaped once from academe, I know I won't go back...
I could agree w/that if employers would stop requiring 4 year degrees for entry level jobs that could be done w/2 yrs of community college.
In the big cities I've lived in, it's hard to get a office job w/o a degree, even if you are answering phones and photocopying. It creates an artificial market for graduate degrees because people have to get a masters just to differentiate themselves from the crowd and have promotion opportunities. You wind up w/jobs advertised for people w/grad degrees that a 4 year grad could do.
I've known many bioscience candidates, and nearly all of them had to quit and take their masters instead. The reasons- burnout, babies, and bank accounts (they need to start working to support their new family).
But more than any other factor- low morale. They are surrounded by folks with more brains than manners or personality, including professors, underlings, and co-equal lab partners... very unpleasant people.
Everyone should read what William James wrote over a century ago: The Ph.D. Octopus
The U.S. Department of Education reported that there were 6,967 degrees awarded for education in 2002,
Well, theres the problem
PhD = Purple-Haired Dykes? Pointy-Headed Dorks?
"Is there really a viable non-academic job market for someone with a doctorate in English? I'm not sure we've done such a wonderful job explaining to students the range of things they can do with a Ph.D..."
Honestly I'm not concerned about the decline in English PhD students. I am more concerned about fields such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, etc. These are the fields that Chinese and Indians are going into and these are the fields that are critical for us to maintain the technical superiority of our military and national security in general.
I worked in a call center once where well over half of the gals on the telephone had a BA....sad, but true
The problem is anyone under 30 without a 4 year degree is considered marginal. Older people can still get away without a 4 year degree, at least for now....
This does tend to de-value education, but when you look at the product of most public high schools, it is not suprising that employers don't take the HS graduates seriously anymore.
Tech schools and Junior colleges should be better respected, but for some reason we denigrate the benefits of these very sensible institutions.
Then we end up with an army of marketing majors, cat therapist, Interior designers, historians (ahem!) and lawyers.
What we are going to end up with is a quarter of the country that is over-educated and under paid, but living in relative comfort doing essentially silly jobs, ....while three quarters of the nation exist in a precarious state desperately competing for an ever shrinking pool of domestic manufacturing jobs....or competing with "immigrants" ...hehe
it's an odd situation, but nothing we can't deal with
As for me, I'm a proud poor Ph.D candidate who knows full well I'll never be rich and famous teaching history.
And since I happen to like America, I'm relatively unemployable at most public universities.
But it's ok,
People should live their lives and do what they want to do.
If money was your only motivating factor, you'd be a prostitute or drug dealer......
Odd how the article treats the decline of doctorates in the humanities as some sort of crisis. Perhaps it will inspire people to invent more new fields like "gender studies" which make only a very doubtful contribution to human wisdom.
I work with a lot of these undergrad kids during our summer sessions.
They come over and pay massive amounts to get intensive english skills. Mainly from China, the kids study engineering, Information Tech, and business.
Their major goal is to secure a graduate degree from an American institution.
We at the university make a little green, and the kids get their first step towards academic success/conquer Amerika studies...(most actually love America)
Now, without putting down my countrymen, I'd have to say these young chinese kids bust @ss constantly. I've never seen anything like it.
The Asians will enroll in 15 hours and then spend 75 hours a week in the library. They think nothing of going on 3 hours sleep a night. Very few of our 19 year old American students can match the Asian students work ethic.
**(The exception is our kids in the military, but again, the guys in boot camp are not living the pampered "let's get drunk and laid" college student lifestyle)**
As far as the Ph.D's you're absolutely right, the overwhelming majority (I'd say 90% at my instution) of advanced degrees taken by international students are in fields such as engineering, chemistry, computer sci., and interestingly, agriculture related sciences.
The second tier are the Business majors.
Very few waste The Party's money in pursuit of a MA in Literature or history.
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