Too Many PhD Graduates or Too Few Academic Job Openings: The Basic Reproductive Number R0 in Academia

• DOI: 10.1002/sres.2210
• Publication Date: 2013-09-09T10:17:19Z
• Authors: Richard C. Larson; Navid Ghaffarzadegan; Yi Xue
• Keywords: Job market; Ask price; Position (finance); Graduate students

The academic job market has become increasingly competitive for PhD graduates. In this note, we ask the basic question of 'Are producing more PhDs than needed?' We take a systems approach and offer 'birth rate' perspective: professors graduate who later themselves, an analogue to how population grows. show that reproduction rate in academia is very high. For example, engineering, professor US graduates 7.8 new during his/her whole career on average, only one these can replace professor's position. This implies steady state, 12.8% attain positions USA. key insight system many places saturated, far beyond capacity absorb at rates they are being produced. Based analysis, discuss policy implications.