Why this PhD Tells His Kids to Steer Clear of Grad School
Joe Rogan has often said that he’s really glad he fought in martial arts tournaments as a teenager; but he’s also really happy that he wasn’t better at it. Because if he had been better, he wouldn’t have gotten out of it. Peter Thiel made a similar point on one of the first episodes of Eric Weinstein’s podcast (The Portal):
“Elite undergraduate education is like junior high school football. It’s not damaging for you, but it’s not going anywhere. But if you continue playing football in high school, and college, and professionally, that’s just more and more brain damage. The better and more successful you are at football, the worse it is for you in the long run. Likewise, if you continue playing the academic game in grad school, post-docs, and beyond, that’s just more and more brain damage. The better and more successful you are in school, the worse it usually is for you in the long run. Just look at the rates of depression and indebtedness among people with graduate degrees. It’s really sad.”
Thiel maintains that graduate school is a net-negative for almost everyone who gets caught in its web, regardless of the field. What keeps it going is a kind of pyramid scheme. He likens it to the allure of Hollywood: 20,000 people show up in L.A. every year wanting to get into the entertainment industry. About 20 succeed. If you talk to the 20, they’ll tell you the system is working fine and you should definitely come to L.A. forthwith.
All those profs who encourage their bright students to apply to grad school: they’re members of the 20. And they’re inadvertently leading their students down a dangerous path. As numerous studies have demonstrated, going to grad school drastically increases your likelihood of committing suicide, becoming obese, and developing serious lifelong mental health problems. What’s more, not only will you lose out on years of wages and work experience, going to grad school virtually guarantees that you’ll spend much of your thirties and forties in debt.
When there are too many lawyers or doctors, the law schools and medical schools clamp down on admissions until the market is ready for more doctors and lawyers. Graduate programs don’t do this. Why? Because the universities figured out that stringing grad students along for decades is a great way to ensure that you’ve got a pool of cheap labor to draw upon.
My wife and I are both members of Thiel’s proverbial “20”: PhDs who managed to find academic jobs. We got lucky. But many others did not, including people we met in grad school who were significantly stronger than we were. It’s a profoundly unjust system. So the next time a well-meaning prof encourages you to apply to grad school, smile, nod, and ignore him.
