The Ph.D. Glut

In recent years, universities have been graduating far more students with doctorates--a record 32,000 last year--than there are jobs for them. Now a task force has reported to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare not only that there is a glut of degree holders, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, but that their overall quality has declined.

At work is a peculiar Gresham's law (bad drives out good) that was inadvertently set in motion in 1968 by the Federal Government's decision to cut research grants and fellowships. It caused prestigious universities, which already were caught in a budget squeeze, to reduce graduate enrollments by 8%. But many public schools of lower quality had only recently founded graduate programs--largely for reasons of status, not need. "To ensure their place in the academic sun," the task force said, such schools obtained more state funds and boosted their enrollments by a total of 10%. Moreover, since these inferior schools primarily turn out research scholars in overcrowded fields, the report forecast that the job market will become even tighter and that better universities will cut back their Ph.D. programs even further.

The task force, headed by Frank Newman, director of university relations at Stanford, also found that federal policy has done nothing to redirect graduate education to where the jobs are. For example, there is an oversupply of Ph.D.s in education, anthropology and history but a shortage in the health professions. The group urged that the Government play on students' self-interest to accomplish reform by distributing fellowships "directly to students on the basis of intellectual and creative promise," rather than channeling them through professions or schools. That would enable the students to "vote with their feet" for programs of proven excellence and presumably for fields where the most jobs are available.

To a limited extent, graduate programs are already being overhauled. Last summer South Dakota State University dropped doctoral programs in agricultural economics, chemistry, entomology and plant pathology because they were drawing few students. For similar reasons, the six state colleges and universities in Kansas are considering eliminating 63 graduate programs. And in New York, a commission has recommended that the board of regents abolish all doctoral programs that fail to meet "standards of high quality and need." Adoption of the Newman proposals would accelerate the trend toward reform--and make it nationwide.

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