thanks Blue Ridge Mt Geek....my wife is an English PhD and has seen first hand the things your post describes....the whole credentials inflation thing has goten so out of hand that to get a job at a JUCO now days you have to have published a book or more....when my wife quit they had 30 applicants for her slot including a freshly minted PhD from Princeton....
my take on the glut:....it started in the late 60s because a student deferrment got you out of Viet Nam.
I know a couple of those. Law school also attracted too many guys then as well.
And making student loans easier to get for postgraduate work just compounds the problem.