Too many Ph.D's

In the article titled, "Does the U.S. Produce Too Many Scientists?", Beryl Lieff Benderly, a fellow of the American Associaton for the Advancement of Science, argues that the U.S. educational system actually produces too many qualified researchers for too few positions, and that a perverse funding structure perpetuates the problem. She says,

is not top-flight technical talent but attractive career opportunities for the approximately 30,000 scientists and engineers—about 18,000 of them American citizens—who earn PhDs in the U.S. each year. But today, however, few young PhDs can get started on the career for which their graduate education purportedly trained them, namely, as faculty members in academic research institutions. Instead, scores of thousands of them spend the years after they earn their doctorates toiling in low-paying, dead-end postdoctoral “training” appointments (called postdocs) in the laboratories of professors, where they ostensibly hone skills they would need to start labs of their own when they become professors. In fact, however, only about 25 percent of those earning American science PhDs will ever land a faculty job that enables them to apply for the competitive grants that support academic research. And even fewer—15 percent by some estimates—will get a post at the kind of research university where the nation’s significant scientific work takes place.....The firms using the largest number of H-1B visas, the type of immigration document that admits highly skilled temporary residents to the U.S workforce, are not supposedly talent-starved American technology companies but Indian-owned firms in the business of outsourcing work from American companies to the subcontinent.

Everyone who enters graduate school knows that the chances of getting a faculty position is less than 15%. After all, the number of graduate students graduating every year can not be equal to the number of faculty positions available. This article is based on a fundamentally flawed premise that someone with a PhD should have to strive for a career in academia and wind up as a tenured professor at a major research university. But scientifically trained people are needed at all levels of society. A PhD, more often than not, indicates some one with good skills in science, willing to work hard and likes doing what he/she likes to do. Many employers value this quality and that's why you can find successful people with PhDs in science or engineering even in the financial or consulting firms. However, another problem, which is not the focus of this article, may need fixation which is that the brightest undergraduates do not continue to pursue graduate studies.