Important subject. Related: Professors and PHDs on food stamps: http://www.salon.com/2014/09/21/professors_on_food_stamps_the_shocking_true_story_of_academia_

Important subject. Related: Professors and PHDs on food stamps: http://www.salon.com/2014/09/21/professors_on_food_stamps_the_shocking_true_story_of_academia_in_2014/ http://www.salon.com/2014/09/21/professors_on_food_stamps_th... http://www.npr.org/2012/05/15/152751116/why-so-many-ph-d-s-are-on-food-stamps http://www.npr.org/2012/05/15/152751116/why-so-many-ph-d-s-a... The PHD bust: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-bust-americas-awful-market-for-young-scientists-in-7-charts/273339/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-... http://www.economist.com/node/17723223 http://www.economist.com/node/17723223 http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-pushes-for-more-scientists-but-the-jobs-arent-there/2012/07/07/gJQAZJpQUW_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-pus... The PHD glut: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/04/glut-postdoc-researchers-stirs-quiet-crisis-science/HWxyErx9RNIW17khv0MWTN/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/04/glut-postdoc-res... http://www.nature.com/news/how-not-to-deal-with-the-phd-glut-1.16182 http://www.nature.com/news/how-not-to-deal-with-the-phd-glut... http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-us-produce-too-m/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-us-produc... The plight of part-time professors: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/the-tall-task-of-unifying-part-time-professors/385507/?single_page=true http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/the-tall... Parents, politicians, and teachers have been beating the 'ever more education' and 'more STEM grads' drums for a while. The past 5-7 years have shown that these things were not, and are not, the panacea they were promised to be. We can always pick the individual situations apart and say 'they made the following 50 mistakes, and that is why they are un- or under-employed', but if we look at the trends, we can see it's bigger than that. We have overlapping crises of credentialism; jobs that aren't there - even for many people with STEM degrees; underpaid and overworked adjuncts that require food stamps to live; people who go to school until they are in their mid-30s, sometimes later, and walk out with a pile of degrees and no marketable skills outside of academia, and cannot get jobs IN academia; skyrocketing tuitions; and an enormous bubble of debt (now over 1T.) How many brilliant people will never come anywhere close to fulfilling their potential because of all this? Not a good situation.