经济学人下载:读博是浪费时间?

For most of history even a first degree at a university was the privilege of a rich few, and many academic staff did not hold doctorates. But as higher education expanded after the second world war, so did the expectation that lecturers would hold advanced degrees. American universities geared up first: by 1970 America was producing just under a third of the world’s university students and half of its science and technology PhDs (at that time it had only 6% of the global population). Since then America’s annual output of PhDs has doubled, to 64,000.
历史上的多数时期内，在大学里读到最高学位是少数富人们的特权，而许多教员们并没有博士头衔。但随着二战后高等教育的扩招，教员们取得博士学位也是自然之事了。美国的大学首次扩张始于20世纪70年代，当时美国每年毕业的大学生接近世界总数的1/3，而自然科学和技术方面的博士生人数占全世界的一半，要知道当时美国人口才占全世界的6%。此后，美国每年毕业的博士生又翻了一番，达到64000人。

Other countries are catching up. Between 1998 and 2006 the number of doctorates handed out in all OECD countries grew by 40%, compared with 22% for America. PhD production sped up most dramatically in Mexico, Portugal, Italy and Slovakia. Even Japan, where the number of young people is shrinking, churned out about 46% more PhDs. Part of that growth reflects the expansion of university education outside America. Richard Freeman, a labour economist at Harvard University, says that by 2006 America was enrolling just 12% of the world’s students.
美国以外的国家也在追赶。98-06年间，经合组织各成员国的博士数量增长了40%，同期美国的增长率才22%。而在墨西哥、葡萄牙、意大利和斯洛伐克，这个数字更大。甚至是在人口老龄化的日本，博士生数量也增加了约46%。增长的部分原因表明美国以外的地区大学教育正在扩招。哈佛大学的劳工经济学家RF说，到2006年为止，美国各大学每年录取大学生的数量仅占全世界的12%。

But universities have discovered that PhD students are cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour. With more PhD students they can do more research, and in some countries more teaching, with less money. A graduate assistant at Yale might earn $20,000 a year for nine months of teaching. The average pay of full professors in America was $109,000 in 2009—higher than the average for judges and magistrates.
但各大学也发现博士生已沦为廉价但主动性强同时可任意使用的劳动力。博士生越多，可以做的研究也多；但在有些国家，做老师的博士生越多，工资越少。而在美国，耶鲁大学的一个研究生助教每年授课9个月就可以有2万美元的收入。据统计，2009年美国各大学教授的平均工资为10万9千美元，比法官和公务员的平均收入还高。

Indeed, the production of PhDs has far outstripped demand for university lecturers. In a recent book, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, an academic and a journalist, report that America produced more than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000 new professorships. Using PhD students to do much of the undergraduate teaching cuts the number of full-time jobs. Even in Canada, where the output of PhD graduates has grown relatively modestly, universities conferred 4,800 doctorate degrees in 2007 but hired just 2,616 new full-time professors. Only a few fast-developing countries, such as Brazil and China, now seem short of PhDs.
事实上，博士的“供给”已远超过了大学的需求。最近有本书，是学者AH和记者CD合着的，该书称美国在05-09年间培养的博士已经超过10万人，而同期需求却只有1.6万。而用大量的博士生给本科生代课又挤占了全职教师岗位。甚至是在博士培养数量一向严谨的加拿大，07年也有4800人博士毕业，而这一年只需要新招聘2616名全职教授。目前，似乎只有个别发展迅速的新兴国家博士供给不足，比如巴西和中国。

A short course in supply and demand
华尔街短期培训课程对物理学博士的冲击

In research the story is similar. PhD students and contract staff known as “postdocs”, described by one student as “the ugly underbelly of academia”, do much of the research these days. There is a glut of postdocs too. Dr Freeman concluded from pre-2000 data that if American faculty jobs in the life sciences were increasing at 5% a year, just 20% of students would land one. In Canada 80% of postdocs earn $38,600 or less per year before tax—the average salary of a construction worker. The rise of the postdoc has created another obstacle on the way to an academic post. In some areas five years as a postdoc is now a prerequisite for landing a secure full-time job.
研究过程中发现，情况基本一致。有个学生将博士生与合同教员---也就是我们所说的“研究员”---比作“学术民工”，因为目前他们的工作量是在太大。不光博士生多，博士后也多。DF将2000年前的资料汇总概括得出这样一个结论：假如美国在生命科学方面每年多提供5%的编制，那么也仅仅只有20%的学生可以获得。在加拿大，80%的博士后每年的薪水是税前3.86万美元，与建筑工人的均薪一个水平。博士后数量的增加也使得想要获得一个学院岗位变得困难。在某些领域，具备5年的博士后研究经历是目前获得一个可靠全职工作的前提。