Academic or Industrial Doctorate?

Greetings from the Australian National University, where Intel fellow Dr Brendan Traw is speaking on "Academic or industrial?". He is arguing the case that a PhD is a good foundation for a career in industry. As part of his case Dr Traw showed statistics that US doctoral degree holders earn significantly more than those with just a masters. However, these statistics cover all doctoral degrees: both PhDs and Professional Doctorates. Those with professional doctorates, particularly in the medical field, have high earnings, and so skew the statistics. I suggest we need more professional degrees in other fields, not to boost the income of graduates, but to provide graduates with skills specifically tuned for industry. A PHd is intended to train a researcher, but there are very few research jobs, in universities, and elsewhere. Most doctoral graduates end up in industry, so I suggest they should be gaining skills relevant to industry, as well as research. Perhaps rather than making students decide between a PHd and a Professional Doctorate (which are both at level 10 of the Australian Qualifications Framework), at the start of their program, we should allow them to choose somewhere on a continuum between.