Why grads with a doctorate are more likely to be unemployed than master’s degree holders
By Charlie Gillis
Dominic Chan/CP
Two decades ago, if you sat at a dinner party next to someone with a
Ph.D., chances were, those letters made an impact. You’d try to sound
your smartest, asking about the person’s field of study, nodding sagely
at the Coles Notes version he saved for such occasions. By dessert, you
might have run out of $5 words, but you’d have done your best to keep
up—a show of respect due to someone with a decade of university
education.
These days, a doctorate is as likely to inspire pity as veneration.
Universities are cutting back on tenure-track jobs. The federal
government is laying off scientists. The economy, meanwhile, is skewing
ever harder toward resource extraction, where the demand for highly
specialized knowledge is limited. This confluence of forces is starting
to show in the numbers: At last count, Ph.D. grads were more likely to
be unemployed than master’s degree holders, while those with jobs
enjoyed a median income only eight per cent higher than their master’s
counterparts, at $65,000 per year. A good many of those were working in
less-than-promising circumstances. One in three doctorate holders have
jobs that didn’t require a Ph.D., while a 2007 survey of Ph.D.s working
at Canadian universities found that only 12 per cent of those under the
age of 35 held tenure or tenure-track positions, compared to 35 per cent
in 1981.
The result has devalued a once-estimable badge of academic
achievement—to the point that some observers worry Canada is becoming a
dead zone in the advancement of human knowledge. “We have an
intellectual climate where there’s not much respect for research,” says
economist Mahmood Iqbal, a visiting professor at Carleton University and
author of a 2012 book called
No PhDs Please: This is Canada.
“In the short and medium term, I don’t see much prospect of most people
with Ph.D.s having a good living.” While demand for doctorates remains
high in a select few disciplines, primarily engineering and business,
prospects are bleak for practically everyone else, Iqbal notes. Just
four per cent of those with graduate science degrees, for example, wind
up in permanent academic research posts; less than half of one per cent
become professors.
For students like 28-year-old Matthew Mazowita, the headwinds have
come as a nasty surprise. Five years ago, the University of Alberta
wooed him to do his doctorate in theoretical math, flying him from
Ottawa to view the campus in Edmonton. Even in such a narrow academic
field, Mazowita’s prospects of getting a professorship, or at least a
postgraduate grant, seemed decent. Now, as he prepares to hand in the
first draft of his dissertation, the largesse has dried up, he says, and
so have the jobs. After the Alberta government slashed U of A’s funding
in its recent budget by $43 million, department administrators warned
graduate students that the sessional teaching positions many use to
support themselves may not be there next autumn. “The situation is
grim,” says Mazowita. “I’ve taken to using the word ‘dire.’ ”
Alberta’s cuts represent an extreme example of spending restraint
seen across the country. Quebec is cutting $124 million in university
spending over the next seven years; Nova Scotia has slashed its by three
per cent. B.C., New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island have all frozen
theirs until provincial finances improve, while Manitoba has sliced in
half a planned five per cent increase. Yet the schools keep cranking out
the doctorates—slightly fewer than 5,000 last year alone.
All of which would be less troubling if the private sector were
putting the country’s best brains to work. Alas, Canadian businesses lag
far behind other developed countries when it comes to funding research
and development where people with highly specialized knowledge might
seek jobs. A
report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) published last June showed that investment by Canadian
businesses in R & D ranked 19th among the 34 OECD countries, at one
per cent of national GDP, despite generous federal tax breaks. That
sluggishness has a direct impact on Ph.D.s, says Iqbal, who quotes a
Canadian friend with a doctorate who sought work in California: “Canada
is cold—not just climatically, but also intellectually.”
Not everyone agrees. While tough economic times have been holding
down university funding, Ph.D.s are doing relatively well compared to
others in the labour market, says Herb O’Heron, director of research and
policy analysis for the
Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada.
Their unemployment rate at last count was six per cent—more than one
percentage point lower than the national average—and was even lower when
only people who earned their doctorates in Canada were counted, he
points out (though the most recent statistics date back to the 2006
census, before the economic downturn). “In the bigger picture, this is
not a sea change from the past,” he says. “It’s always been extremely
competitive to get a tenured position in academe. If it’s harder than it
was before, it’s only a wee bit harder.” Ironically, universities need
more Ph.D.s than ever: Enrolment reached a record 1.2 million students
in 2011, while the institutions are actively recruiting foreign students
able to pay a premium in tuition.
Sadly for many doctorate holders, that demand doesn’t translate to
job security. To meet the growing demand for professors, universities
increasingly rely on sessional lecturers—essentially, Ph.D.s on
contract—who toil in hope of winning tenure-track jobs. Instead, many
get stuck in a state of chronic underemployment that seems unworthy of
the extra five or six years they spent striving for their academic brass
ring. “I look back to when I first started my Ph.D., and I think I was
incredibly naive,” says Jeffrey Bercuson, a political science Ph.D. who
lectures at the University of Toronto. “As of this moment, I don’t know
with any meaningful certainty whether I’ll have employment in September.
I’m 30 years old and I’m anxious to become a respectable adult.” To
that end, he scours job postings at institutions across North America,
wondering whether his ticket to security will ever materialize—and
whether the three letters that qualify him for it are all they’re
cracked up to be.
Source:
macleans.ca
