PhD Gluts

[John-charles Bradbury]

An article in today's Chronicle by Robert Wright http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i31/31b02001.htm poses the obvious economic solution to the glut in the History PhD market: cut wages.  He argues that cutting salaries eliminates non-price rationing and makes the market more efficient.  However, I have a problem with this.  Why don't colleges cut wages in glut disciplines such as history, philosophy, etc.? Certainly, economists and computer scientists command higher salaries to account for greater scarcity, indicating that schools do respond to labor market conditions.  Why then are wages in glut disciplines so high? Also, why do people continue to enter the discipline when the expected wage is so low?   Some suggested answers: 1) Asymmetric info between administrators and departments. The administration keeps wages high to attract a large number of applicants to any job so that department hiring committees will have a harder time hiding candidates who make the current department look bad.  (But then why don't administrators do this for all disciplines?)   2) To attract good thinkers to become historians, schools must keep the wage high enough to compete with other disciplines and occupations that require intelligence. Therefore, it is beneficial to keep the wage high and sort applicants for non-wage purposes after the fact.  That is PhDs who will work for 30K are not worth 30K.  That is 40K historians are at the minimum level of competence. This explanation would also entail the poor screening of PhD worthiness by graduate schools.  A school could easily gain a reputation for having only 40K PhDs, thereby cutting search costs, and outcompete other programs.   3) Interest group reasons.  Faculty lobby for higher wages.  (This answer is boring and I think incorrect, because current faculty bear the cost of the non-price rationing.)   In other words, I don't have a good answer.  Anyone else want to give it a try?   JC   _________________________ John-Charles Bradbury, Ph.D. Department of Economics The University of the South 735 University Ave. Sewanee, TN 37383 -1000 Phone: (931) 598-1721 Fax: (931) 598-1145 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]