That’s a recipe for societal dysfunction. Many historians have advanced some version of the thesis that dashed expectations among elites can lead to social unrest. Most recently, historian Peter Turchin has warned that overproduction of elites is a harbinger of discord in modern America. There’s evidence that Ph.D. school, never a particularly fun experience, is becoming increasingly stressful thanks to growing worry about careers.
A handful of angry, downwardly mobile English Ph.D.s aren’t by themselves enough to overthrow the institutions of society, but they can make hugely outsized contributions to unrest and discord if they are so inclined. Remember, these are very smart people who are very good at writing things, and well-schooled in any number of dissident ideas. Those are the kind of people who tend to lead revolutions.
There are two solutions to the Ph.D. overproduction problem. The first is to increase the demand for Ph.D.s. In the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, that's actually pretty easy to do: Simply pour a lot more government money into research. That’s something the U.S. badly needs to do anyway, in order to maintain technological leadership and push up economic growth rates. The Endless Frontier Act, a bill introduced by Democratic Senator Charles Schumer in May with bipartisan support, proposes spending $20 billion a year on research and development. If that legislation were to be passed, it would probably be sufficient to mop up any excess Ph.D.s in engineering, biology and other STEM fields.
But for humanities and social science Ph.D.s, there's no such quick fix. The government isn’t going to dole out billions a year boosting research in non-STEM areas. So the production of Ph.D.s in these fields simply needs to be reduced to a level in line with new economic realities. Already this is happening, with more than 140 humanities and social science programs suspending Ph.D. student admissions for 2021.
This is going to be painful and frustrating for some young people who dream of studying those subjects for a living. But the squeeze on universities meant that those dreams always contained an element of fantasy. As with so many other things, America is going to have to do the hard work of bringing its academic dreams down to earth.
Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.