Doctoral education is at a crossroads. Around the world, universities continue to expand PhD enrolments despite shrinking academic career pathways, leaving many graduates underemployed and disillusioned. At the same time, professional doctorates, designed to connect advanced research with societal and industry needs, remain undervalued within the academic hierarchy.
If higher education wants to remain credible, perhaps it’s time to admit the obvious: we have too many PhDs, and we are investing in the wrong kind of doctorate. But the real debate we need is not just about how many doctorates we produce, but about what kind of doctoral education the future requires.
Across the world, doctoral enrolments have surged far beyond the capacity of academia to absorb them. In many countries, only a small fraction of PhD graduates will ever secure a permanent academic role. For the majority, the reality is years of postdoctoral contracts, teaching fellowships, or drifting away from academia and research entirely.
This mismatch raises an uncomfortable ethical question. Universities know that the academic labour market is saturated, yet they continue to expand PhD admissions. Is it responsible to keep training so many researchers for careers that do not exist? Or is this, in effect, a broken promise, where candidates commit years of their lives to training with little chance of fulfilling the academic vocation they were sold?
The drivers are not hard to find. Universities benefit enormously from recruiting more PhD students. They provide affordable labour in laboratories, lecture theatres and tutorials. Their research outputs boost institutional rankings, grant income and reputation. Supervisors gain publications and citations. The incentives all point in one direction: more PhDs.
For higher education, this model is lucrative. For candidates, it is often exploitative. While universities reap the reputational rewards, graduates bear the personal and financial risks. The PhD is increasingly less a pathway to a career than a mechanism for sustaining the academic reputation economy.
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Even for those who succeed academically, the system is stacked against innovation. Recent studies suggest that PhDs with interdisciplinary research face hiring disadvantages at elite universities, which still reward disciplinary orthodoxy.
This irony is striking: higher education claims to prize innovation, yet structurally penalises those who step outside traditional silos. Doctoral education risks reinforcing conservatism, even as society demands boundary-crossing knowledge to tackle global challenges.
At the same time, there is a striking imbalance in how different forms of doctoral education are valued. Professional doctorates, whether DBAs, EdDs, DProfs, or medical research doctorates, offer a different model. These programmes are designed not for the academic “ivory tower”, but for the professions, linking advanced research with practice, policy and innovation.
Such doctorates can equip leaders in healthcare, education, business and public administration to apply research skills directly to real-world challenges. They provide exactly the kind of impact governments and industries demand from higher education. Yet they remain stubbornly stigmatised as “second class” – useful, perhaps, but never to be confused with the “real” PhD.
This reveals a deeper cultural hierarchy in higher education. The PhD is treated as the gold standard, the “true” doctorate, while all others sit below it. But this hierarchy is increasingly out of step with the needs of society. If universities continue to cling to the PhD as the sole marker of scholarly legitimacy, they risk entrenching an elitism that is not only outdated but counterproductive.
The irony is clear: we have a glut of PhDs who cannot find academic work, while professional doctorates – rigorous, practice-oriented and societally relevant – are kept at the margins of academic recognition. Prestige has been prioritised over purpose.
The arrival of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) only sharpens this crisis. If a piece of software can already automate parts of literature review, data analysis, and even writing, what does it mean for a doctorate designed around demonstrating such skills? The value of a PhD can no longer be taken for granted. Professional doctorates, which emphasise applying knowledge in complex, real-world contexts where GenAI is a tool rather than a substitute, may well prove more future-proof.
The challenges are not just technological but systemic. In many countries, doctoral degrees are multiplying at such a rate that they risk losing their signalling power, a case of credential inflation.
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Meanwhile, international imbalances are deepening: while Europe debates reducing PhD intakes, China and India are aggressively expanding them. The result is an oversupplied, globally mobile doctoral workforce, yet one whose opportunities are uneven and whose qualifications are not equally valued across borders.
What doctoral education needs is not simply reform but reinvention. Universities should reduce traditional PhD enrolments to align more honestly with the limited academic pathways available. At the same time, they should elevate professional doctorates to equal status, recognising them as legitimate, rigorous routes that serve different needs.
Doctoral education does not need to be diminished, but it does need to be diversified. The PhD will always have a central place in knowledge creation, yet it cannot remain the sole model of scholarly legitimacy.
Professional doctorates, with their emphasis on applied research and societal impact, must be elevated to equal status if universities are to remain relevant to the challenges of our time.
Prestige without purpose cannot sustain doctoral education. The future will belong not to more PhDs, but to more types of doctorates.
