In this live, informal presentation Steve Tippins of Beyond PhD Coaching outlines the evolution and current challenges of doctoral education, primarily in the United States. He begins by tracing the medieval apprenticeship model that underpins the traditional PhD pathway: a student works under a mentor, gradually gains responsibility, and ultimately earns a doctorate as a form of guild membership. Tippins argues that this model has changed little, yet it now yields a high attrition rate—about half of enrolled students do not complete their degrees—suggesting systemic flaws. He then describes three major contemporary pressures: (1) a dramatic shift in the academic job market, with tenure‑track positions dropping below 50 % and a surge in full‑time instructor or adjunct roles that emphasize teaching over research and pay substantially less (often 70 % of a faculty salary); (2) chronic funding shortages for graduate students, including abrupt funding terminations and rescinded admission offers due to budget cuts; and (3) inadequate preparation for non‑academic careers, leaving many PhD candidates to navigate industry transitions on their own. Tippins notes the downstream impact on undergraduate education, as fewer funded doctoral students are available to teach undergrad courses. He concludes by inviting questions and offering coaching services to help current and prospective doctoral candidates navigate these challenges.
Chapters
All right, we're live. Hey, this is Steve tippins from beyond PhD coaching, and we're trying out, going live here to see, you know, if we can get responses or help people better. So today, unless a bunch of people randomly just jump in with questions, I am going to talk for a little bit about what I'm perceiving as the state of doctoral education in the US Predominantly, but it's fairly similar in other places as well. So let me quickly go back to the underpinnings of doctoral education. And it pretty much, from all I've seen and read, has came out of the medieval apprenticeship type model, where if you wanted to be a cooper, a barrel maker, let's say you went and apprenticed under a barrel maker and learned all the right things to do with the wood and the staves and the metal surrounding the barrel. And, you know, you, over time were given more and more responsibility until you learned to make the barrels on your own. And, and one day the cooper said, yep, you've made it. You can now join the guild, you can be a barrel maker. And that's where academia was as well. It's, you went and you worked under someone and you studied and you know, the conditions weren't great, but you studied under them and worked and discussed and came up with ideas and, and eventually you wrote and they tested your writing and you eventually were, you know, given the title of doctor or teacher or however they wanted to say it. You had cleared the hurdle. And as I like to say to people today, getting a doctorate, you became a member of the union, you got your union card, and that's the foundation of it. And doctoral education hasn't come a long way since, since then it's, you go to a school, you take some classes, you work underneath someone, show them the material you're working on, get their critiques back and forth. Eventually they and a group of people look at what you, the work you've done, ask you questions, and when they think you're sufficient, efficiently ready, you've completed a dissertation, you've defended it, now you go and pass, and you're a doctor. So it's not a much of a different model. In fact, many of the people you are going to have as chairs and committee members grew up under that model. So that's the model they know, and that's the model they know to continue and how they know to continue accepting and, and helping people finish their doctorates. And under that model, half of people who are get into a program, don't make it, and that first is sad. Second, it shows the model isn't that good if only half the people who they think should be allowed in can make it through. That means the model itself has issues and the institutions should be doing things to correct that model. Now let's look at what's happening today and in the last couple of years in particular. Well, even it goes even longer than that. Universities have been budget stretched and gosh, almost, well, 35 plus years ago when I got out of graduate school, there were more jobs than there were people applying and these were tenure track positions. So a lot of, you know, people got jobs and they got tenure track jobs and they then taught and published and got tenure. And there were very few what, what now are called instructor or even more professors of practice positions which were predominantly teaching jobs. Most of the jobs were teaching and research like 70% plus. And today it's moving in the other direction. Less than half of the jobs are tenure track jobs. They're now instructors or even adjuncts. But if they're full time, they're instructors, they're professors of practice. The myriad of names for these positions, but it basically means you're going to teach more, very little if any research is going to be asked of you. And the big one, number three, they pay you less. And behind closed doors, what they're doing is taking positions that they have funds allocated for and not using all the funds. If I can take a professor's assistant professor, whatever line and fill it with someone who is an instructor, we'll just use that term for abbreviation purposes and pay them 70 cents on the dollar. Well, now I've got that 30 cents and a dollar to do other things with. And there's been a lot of that that's gone on in academia. And let's look today, if you're coming out of a doctoral program, many fewer tenure track positions, instructor positions potentially available, but many people going into industry. Yet programs aren't helping you understand your value in industry. So you have to be doing that on your own or finding help doing that. In addition, programs themselves have had funding issues, meaning, oh, the federal government cut back on funding. The university doesn't allocate it as much to us. I've had a number of clients in the past year said, hey, my funding runs out in six months. That was not what I was initially told. Or one, my funding runs out tomorrow. That's not what I was initially told. And they've been able to cobble together things to move forward. But funding is an issue. I remember last spring hearing of people who were getting letters from schools where they had been accepted to doctoral programs, and the letters rescinding their acceptance because they didn't have funding anymore. I know somebody this year recently got a letter from a school saying basically in so many words, we'd like to accept you, but we don't have any money. They didn't say the accept part, but that's what was implied. So the conditions of doctoral programs are changed a lot. It's also going to impact undergraduate education because doctoral students, especially at brick and mortar schools, have handled a large percentage of undergraduate classes. So there's lots of things happening. I'm only here for a few minutes today to test this out, but there's a lot of things happening. If you're here and have questions, please jump in at any time. If not, I'm going to sign off soon, assuming the test has been successful, but keep coming back probably Monday through Friday for a while just to see and talk to people and see what's going on and see if we can be helpful. So all of that said, no matter what, I wish you luck moving forward and please reach out to beyond PhD coaching if we can help in any way. Have a beautiful day.
