While I understand the upside, the reality of why it’s being pursued in the United States is that this is intended to drive academia into an advanced version of a trade school.

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gwd 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Do the math: The number of professorial positions is not growing (or not very quickly). Under steady-state, each professor only needs to train one single tenure-track PhD in their entire career. (Or maybe 10 professors need to train 11-12 students, to account for various forms of attrition.)

If you want more PhD's than that, you have to figure out a place for them to work; industry is a good "pressure relief valve".

	▲	rayiner 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		With the aging population, we also hit peak college attendance 15 years ago.

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Brystephor 41 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That sounds like an excellent thing based on that last sentence. Anecdotally, I hear people talk about trade school as being much more practical compared to the majority of traditional 4 year degrees. So I am interpreting a "move towards trade school" as an increase in practicality and therefore utility to the student.

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tudelo 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I just wanted to echo your comment. Most people, in my experience, pursue an undergrad program with the intention of being employable. This is my personal experience, but also a learned opinion from being a teaching assistant for some years. Places like waterloo stress co-op, it is built in to the program. IMO the average person seeking an education are served under a model that places them in or near industry related work at some point. While I understand the original post is relating to PHDs, I think most programs (or rather, participants in programs) would love to have this sort of integration despite it being a hard problem.

	▲	flutteringfool 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Interestingly enough, Kitchener, adjacent to Waterloo has a large population of German-descent. I wonder if the OP's spouse's experience in Germany has any relation.

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mulderc 34 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

There is no reason to assume it is “more practical” or that it will increase utility for the student. Especially at the graduate level, the deeper you are able to explore a subject and the more you can connect that subject to a broader range of topics the more utility you get from the degree. Less time to finish a degree means you are less able to do that. I would think this will decrease the likelihood of new ideas being developed which will quickly become a problem for society in general. Also no one gets a PhD because it is practical, you get it because you want to explore a topic and push the boundaries of human knowledge.

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rayiner 30 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Germans are big on trade schools. Despite being one of the richest western european countries, Germany (and Switzerland) have along the lowest college graduation rates, because they prioritize trade schools.