That's undoubtedly true. My comment was meant to be taken as a foil to arts PhDs. My cousin's boyfriend is doing an economics/geography/statistics post-doc (m

That's undoubtedly true. My comment was meant to be taken as a foil to arts PhDs. My cousin's boyfriend is doing an economics/geography/statistics post-doc (modelling the behaviour of people in cities in regards to travel to and from work, traffic, etc), and his focus is entirely on research. He would be very hard pressed to get a job in the private sector, so his goal is to get published many times then get a tenure track position at a research university. There's nothing wrong with that, but I appreciate the fact that my professors have actually worked in the field they're training us for.