As someone in his late 30s who's doing a Master's degree and likely to go on for a PhD, I agree. It should be reformed, not abolished. What should be abolished

As someone in his late 30s who's doing a Master's degree and likely to go on for a PhD, I agree. It should be reformed, not abolished. What should be abolished are 97 percent of postdoc positions. Postdocs used to be a rare, prestigious opportunity to do something different one might not want to do for one's whole life, like work for IAS in Princeton or for the government doing cryptography. What they became is something else entirely: another stupid rung on the ladder, an excuse to dangle the carrot of tenure (which isn't "lifetime job security" as academic detractors like to claim, but merely the presence of due process, as opposed to arbitrary whim, around personnel decisions) for longer.