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Plenty of people have dunked on a variety of aspects of that moronic WSJ op-ed — the misogyny, the condescension, the anti-intellectualism. I’m here to complain the revisionist history.
There’s a lot in the piece about how kids these days have it so easy: PhD defenses of yore (which the author has never participated in) were true battles of intellect, with only the worthy emerging on the other side.
This is a basic misunderstanding of a PhD: it’s a research, not debating, degree. Of course we expect people to cogently discuss & defend their work, but that’s not the main point of the degree. And an atrocious PhD defense is usually an indictment of the advisor.
More broadly, the idea that there’s been a continual slide in standards and quality since some imagined halcyon period sometime in the past century is complete crap. If anything, it’s way more challenging to get a PhD now (and will only get harder in the future).
There’s way more research & literature to know & synthesize, and low-hanging fruit has all been plucked. You can see this in the quality of people getting PhDs: on average, they’re better than people of a generation ago (who were, on average, better than the generation before).
I see this all of the time when people apply for jobs (faculty or postdoc): credentials that would have gotten you a faculty job 40 years ago won’t get you a postdoc today. And if you’re not improving your faculty, on average, when hiring, then you’re doing it wrong.
This doesn't mean that there aren't great people who've gotten their degrees decades ago. Of course there are. But it's sort of like sports: the typical basketball player today is WAAAAY better than even 30 years ago. (And spare me anything re the lost art of the bounce pass.)
This is a great, and should be celebrated, not mourned! And if you're offended that I've intimated that your junior colleagues might be better than you, rest assured that I'm clearly talking about everyone else, not you, you magnificent being.
Just so you know, this is the way most people sound when they call me "professor":
