Wednesday, March 11, 2020
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.
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