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Comment by Shaddox | Hacker News Reader

I realize it's a bit cynical of me to say this, but this is the free market at work.

There can only be oh so many philosophy professors. Assuming a professor career lasts 40 years and each of these programs produces 10 graduates a year, how can they fit in academia? Maybe before you enroll you need to be made to sign a disclaimer that the opportunities are very scarce in the field.

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Why does everything have to be labelled a "market"?

Is it really helpful to talk about an exchange of "goods" to explain the poor treatment of PhD students in academia?

It's not goods, it's a labor market. And when supply is out of whack with demand, your bargaining power goes through the floor -- which leads to situations like this.

What is really nasty is the fact that there is a huge demand for phd students as they drive research forward. So they deduce there will be demand once they graduate, which is not the case.

Elastic demand for labor - people want more when it's cheap, as much as they can get when it's free (or the government pays you for each student)

In STEM there is certainly a shortage of academic jobs for qualified PhD holders. Not everyone who gets a PhD is equal, but academic stem wouldn't lose anything by being able to recruit more of the people they train.

It's more a glut of people than a shortage of jobs. The rest of society has no obligation to fund everyone academia pumps out.

Why does one even need a PhD to teach philosophy? A certain rather famous philosopher spent his days milling about the city center, accosting random passers-by and instructing them in philosophy whether they were interested or not.

After spending decades doing that, I assume he died of old age, surrounded by his admiring fans?

Rather than an over supply of philosophy PhDs, perhaps we have a shortage of hemlock?

If you're referring to Socrates, then yes, but it helped that he was a bit like Erdős in his utter lack of interest in physical comfort and financial security.

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