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There are multiple issues in the Phd/Faculty market. Different fields are at different phases of the cycle. The biggest trend is that Universities expanded in t
by lumost 1y ago
There are multiple issues in the Phd/Faculty market. Different fields are at different phases of the cycle. The biggest trend is that Universities expanded in the 1950s and 60s, and are now contracting as population declines. Universities continue to increase Phd production despite declining total employment numbers as Phd students provide cheap labor. Numerous non-tenure track positions have been created to fill the void with mixed results.
- ls612 1y agoThis is the case in many fields but not in Economics. There is little incentive to pad out PhD counts for cheap labor since the vast majority of the Econ PhD is either taking classes in first and second year or working on independent research after that. All job market candidates are expected to have a solo authored paper on the market with some asterisks I won't get into. There is little in the way of big labs or PIs who require endless RAs. To the extent we need RAs it's often undergrads or predocs doing data cleaning stuff.