I don't think I can see an actual argument in this. Could it be summarized as approximately 'The current PhD system has good points but it's several decades ol

I don't think I can see an actual argument in this. Could it be summarized as approximately 'The current PhD system has good points but it's several decades old, you learn from someone who actually knows the stuff in practice, and politicians don't want to spend enough for it despite lionizing the economic value of the outcomes'? I fail to see the problems beyond the obvious, and while there are obvious problems, people with agendas published under titles like "Towards a Global Core Value System in Doctoral Education" seem uniquely qualified to aggravate them. If anyone is to muck around with one of the core arrangements for real scientific research (on a global scale, no less) they had better be very clear about the distinctions between "changed" and "actually improved".