From the article: "Imagine bright young things entering a new kind of science PhD, in which both they and their supervisors embrace from the start the idea that graduates will go on to an array of demanding careers — government, business, non-profit and education — and work towards that goal (see page 381). The students meet supervisors from a range of disciplines; they acquire management, communication, leadership and other transferable skills alongside traditional academic development of critical thinking and analysis; and they spend six months to a year abroad."

This sounds a lot like my undergrad degree, and not at all what I expect from a PhD.

In my opinion, people get bachelors degrees in order to get a job. It used to be that was what trade school was for, but now it seems that you need a degree just to qualify for an interview in a lot of fields. In my opinion, though, you get a PhD because you are interested in the subject - not because you need it for a job.

I think PhDs are an end in themselves, not a means to an end. Please don't water down my PhD by forcing me to do cross-discipline studies that do not interest me, or by teaching me management skills - I'm not in business school.

Now, a smart PhD student would realize that they might be getting a job in the industry, and they might not be able to get the job that they are hoping for, and plan accordingly. For example, while I hope to get a job at a research institution when I graduate, I realize that it is possible that I may not, so I take extra-curricular courses and seminars to prepare me for other jobs. But I do this because I choose to, not because some people somewhere else think that I might not get the job they think that I want.

Frankly, it may be rude, but if there are more PhDs than job openings, that's a good thing. It creates a lot of competition. It keeps mediocre people (or at least it helps to) out of these critical positions. It prevents people (or at least helps to) from trying to get a PhD solely for the purpose of getting a job, which cheapens the degree all around.

So long as PhD students are aware of their future prospects (and I don't know any who aren't - this stuff is crammed down our throats), I think that this is fine. Entrepreneurs do this all the time. They know that starting a business is not guaranteed - indeed, they might go bankrupt. But they might hit it big. This isn't a problem, and we don't start government initiatives to help entrepreneurs who fail get a good job anyway. We don't make entrepreneurs take back-up courses in plumbing and construction, so that when some of them fail they have a fall-back job. They don't want that job anyway. If they did, they would prepare for it on their own, because they are smart people.

In science it is the same thing. The people who love science for science's sake - these are the people we want to be scientists. These are the people we can trust with tenure, because they would do research even if we didn't pay them at all. They are smart, and they know that they might not make it into their dream job, so they can prepare themselves for alternatives if they want. Or they can shoot for broke, spend years of their lives doing fantastic research and focusing on doing only the things they love (which, by coincidence, help the rest of the world). But forcing them to prepare for alternatives because some of them might benefit from it is just a turn-off.