The only thing this article convinces me of is the shallowness of The Economist. The University of Pheonix offers PhDs and so does MIT. If the University of P

The only thing this article convinces me of is the shallowness of The Economist. The University of Pheonix offers PhDs and so does MIT. If the University of Pheonix starts offering more PhDs each year and MIT keeps graduating the same number, then according to TFA the USA would be doing better in terms of PhDs. This is asinine reasoning and does harm to educational policy in the USA. PhD programs differ widely between schools and disciplines. If you're going to pursue a PhD do some investigation. Find out what graduates from the program are doing now. Do you want to do what they're doing? If so then consider a PhD from this program. If not then either don't do a PhD or find another program.