Like most problems it comes from too many people chasing too few dollars. The ultimate cause was the construction of a system that trains too many people for th

Like most problems it comes from too many people chasing too few dollars. The ultimate cause was the construction of a system that trains too many people for the money avalible to employ them. The current system was deliberately constructed by politicians after WWII when we had more money (and demand for science) than scientists. They set out to create more scientists by designing a system where each scientist trained 10 to 100s of additional scientists (PhDs). This worked great until around the mid 1970s when the supply of scientists finally caught up with the money. Since then the problem has been getting worse.