From this article, found via Slashdot:
The core of the problem is, of course, the job market. The M.L.A. report estimates that only sixty per cent of newly-minted Ph.D.s will find tenure-track jobs after graduation.
The core of the problem is, of course, the assumption that the purpose of years spent in academia learning to pile higher and deeper is to get a permanent job in academia teaching others to pile higher and deeper, so that they can....
Let's assume that each newly-minted Ph.D. who gets a tenure-track job spends 30 years in academia, minting a total of 10 new Ph.D.s in his field during that time, each of whom follows in his footsteps. (I just made these numbers up, but we're talking humanities here.) How long does it take before the population of tenured Ph.D.s exceeds the total population of the world? Explain your assumptions about starting conditions (initial number of tenured Ph.D.s, number of institutions, etc.), population growth, economic growth, limiting conditions, and so on.
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