经济学人下载:读博是浪费时间?

Many of the drawbacks of doing a PhD are well known. Your correspondent was aware of them over a decade ago while she slogged through a largely pointless PhD in theoretical ecology. As Europeans try to harmonise higher education, some institutions are pushing the more structured learning that comes with an American PhD.
读博的诸多劣势总所周知。当笔者10年前正为了PhD而埋头苦干研究那毫无意义的理论生态学时就知道了，但可惜的是一代又一代前仆后继。当欧洲人努力协调高等教育时，有些机构正在竭力推行来自美国的更加有组织的博士学习方式。

The organisations that pay for research have realised that many PhDs find it tough to transfer their skills into the job market. Writing lab reports, giving academic presentations and conducting six-month literature reviews can be surprisingly unhelpful in a world where technical knowledge has to be assimilated quickly and presented simply to a wide audience. Some universities are now offering their PhD students training in soft skills such as communication and teamwork that may be useful in the labour market. In Britain a four-year NewRoutePhD claims to develop just such skills in graduates.
花钱搞研究的机构现在已经发现许多PhD浪得虚名，根本就没什么动手能力。撰写实验报告、展示专业ppt或者进行长达6个月的文献研究对于这个世界来说屁用没有。为什么？因为这个世界要求你必须快速汲取知识并以最通俗的方式呈现给全球观众，而不是煞有介事的将本该简单的东西搞的鬼都看不懂却还洋洋自得。目前，有些大学还给这些博士们开些对未来可能有帮助的诸如沟通、团队合作这样软技能的课程。例如在英国，一个为期4年的“新路径PhD”的项目声称正是要培养这种软硬通吃的研究生。

Measurements and incentives might be changed, too. Some university departments and academics regard numbers of PhD graduates as an indicator of success and compete to produce more. For the students, a measure of how quickly those students get a permanent job, and what they earn, would be more useful. Where penalties are levied on academics who allow PhDs to overrun, the number of students who complete rises abruptly, suggesting that students were previously allowed to fester.
相应的准入标准和机制或许也会做出调整。一些高校认为博士培养量是成功大学的标志，因此大量的粗制滥造。而对学生来说，问问自己“多久才能找到一个稳定的工作，工资水平又如何？”才是王道。放任大学扩招博士的学者们被施以处罚，完成博士学位的人数激增，表明扩招决定做出之时就暗含了该群体质量的下降。

Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and will have been the best at everything they have done. They will have amassed awards and prizes. As this year’s new crop of graduate students bounce into their research, few will be willing to accept that the system they are entering could be designed for the benefit of others, that even hard work and brilliance may well not be enough to succeed, and that they would be better off doing something else. They might use their research skills to look harder at the lot of the disposable academic. Someone should write a thesis about that.
许多读博的学生都是班上的佼佼者，并被期望未来在任何方面都有更出色的表现。马上，今年新招录的一批研究生就要投入到他们各自研究课题中去了。然而，他们不会承认，不会承认他们刚刚进入的系统或许是为了其他群体的利益而设计的，不会承认勤奋和天才不必然带来成功，不会承认选择读博其实是个机会成本更大的错误选择。其实，或许他们可以用掌握的研究方法好好的研究下目前大量又普遍贬值的博士学位，或许有人就这个话题还可以撰写个什么博士论文。