Reform the PhD System or Close It Down

jamie points out an opinion piece by Columbia professor Mark C. Taylor in Nature News decrying the state of PhD education in the US, calling it "broken and unsustainable." Quoting: "The necessary changes are both curricular and institutional. One reason that many doctoral programmes do not adequately serve students is that they are overly specialized, with curricula fragmented and increasingly irrelevant to the world beyond academia. Expertise, of course, is essential to the advancement of knowledge and to society. But in far too many cases, specialization has led to areas of research so narrow that they are of interest only to other people working in the same fields, subfields or sub-subfields. Many researchers struggle to talk to colleagues in the same department, and communication across departments and disciplines can be impossible. If doctoral education is to remain viable in the twenty-first century, universities must tear down the walls that separate fields, and establish programmes that nourish cross-disciplinary investigation and communication. They must design curricula that focus on solving practical problems, such as providing clean water to a growing population. Unfortunately, significant change is unlikely to come from faculty members, who all too often remain committed to traditional approaches."

Comments

Re:"irrelevant to the world beyond academia"

[dintech]

Exactly. But the problem here is that the poster is lumping all PhDs in together.
In Physics at least, specialisation can lead to some very useful and broadly applicable findings. Granted, sometimes completely unexpectedly.
I can imagine the same is not true for a highly specialist life sciences PhD.

However, is that really a problem? The 'great minds' earning PhDs in life sciences, probably would never be useful in the world of 'real' science anyway, so no great loss. Sorry if this sounds snobbish, but it is. :)

Re:Too many bodies, too few incentives.

[Overzeetop]

are too few grants (money) that are provided by our tax moneys

Wait - you think your work should be funded by the taxpayer 'cause you're smart and you find your field interesting? Go use your own goddamned money to play in your lab.