Yes, exactly: Maybe men irrationally pursued more PhDs than made sense, while women made more logical decisions all along, and men's lower rates reflect them improving their life choices.

Maybe both men and women irrationally pursued more PhDs than made sense, but the men were historically more likely granted the opportunity to find out for themselves why it was a bad idea ;-)

(I get your point though. "Just sayin'", as the phrase goes)

Aren't the "worthless" (market-wise) degrees (humanities, social "sciences", etc.) mostly women? Also, many men pursued CS even back when it's wasn't such a lucrative career. I'm not convinced that people choose their professions particularly rationally...

I think that's true; many people do avoid Ph.D.s because they aren't a good investment. Whether or not that's progress depends on your goals: if you just care about more people having more money, then sure, more Ph.D.s doesn't equal more progress in the short run.

But at least in the US, there's a huge problem that the problems we have that can be solved are increasingly technical, requiring more and more education. Meanwhile, the incentives we're providing incentivize not getting more education. If we're going to continue the charade that capitalism is meritocratic, we need to align the incentives with the needs of our culture and economy, or the results will be disastrous.

> Meanwhile, the incentives we're providing incentivize not getting more education.

I think we need to be careful here. Education does not stop after you leave school, I think that idea more than anything is causing this rift in our educational system in the US.

Speaking from personal experience, I graduated with a degree in neuroscience, currently working as a software developer. In the three years since I graduated uni I have learned exponentially more than I ever did in undergrad, and its knowledge/experience that is actually pertinent to my career, interests.

I think degree inflation is a problem, I think our preconceived notions of "education" are a problem, and ultimately this one-size-fits-all, push them through an antiquated teaching model is absolutely the wrong approach, and the proof is in the pudding.

> If we're going to continue the charade that capitalism is meritocratic

Strawman, this is never the claim, the ideal for capitalism is not meritocracy, rather providing a platform for people to trade, labor for their own wants and needs and be able to attain them through their own volition. If the wants and needs of a traditional education are no longer in the mind's eye of our future scientists/engineers, then I think we ought to rethink our educational system altogether instead of reincentivizing a highly flawed system.

A potential solution to this problem is to offer other routes to becoming scientists, engineers of which we can point to examples over seas for insight. Germany, for example, has an extensive apprenticeship program that is sort of like co-ops here except the student gets paid to work on the job, and one doesn't have to go to a 4 year uni to get one.

> I graduated with a degree in neuroscience, currently working as a software developer. In the three years since I graduated uni I have learned exponentially more than I ever did in undergrad, and its knowledge/experience that is actually pertinent to my career, interests.

I'm not sure why this would be surprising to anyone and it certainly is not a criticism of the education system. You got a degree in a field and it didn't prepare you for work in a completely different field? Be still my heart! How can this be!!?

>> If we're going to continue the charade that capitalism is meritocratic

> Strawman, this is never the claim, the ideal for capitalism is not meritocracy

That's ridiculous. Meritocracy is definitely a claim that supporters of capitalism say is what makes capitalism better than the alternatives.

>But at least in the US, there's a huge problem that the problems we have that can be solved are increasingly technical…

I would have to agree with this statement.

>…requiring more and more education.

I disagree with this statement if it means dealing with the BS that entails submitting oneself to the pipeline in order work on research.

>Meanwhile, the incentives we're providing incentivize not getting more education.

Oddly, I think this still holds true despite my disagreement with the above (if education == submitting oneself to the pipeline in order work on research).

For myself, I write software for mobile devices and eeg hardware for research and data analysis in a neuro lab and have to consult with other labs around the world who want to do experiments and don't have those capabilities in house, without having a degree of any sort. Occasionally this involves reading papers from topics like DSP, EM, comp geometry, and neuroimaging on top of software/hardware documentation for use in such software.

The post-docs and phd students I see are increasingly becoming inept when it comes to even conducting experiments and has lead to gross inefficiencies as more and more things require not only basic knowledge of computing and systems but other fields they are simply not exposed to on a practical degree. Even worse, there seems to be this expectation that they don't have to pursue/learn or do such things (probably because it wasn't covered in their syllabi and they wont receive a grade for it…), though I see a lot of superficial efforts at trying address such.

I think as long as the dynamics continue as they are in academia, they will allow for opportunity for those who have skills sans degrees (not signals of skills) to find work that is meaningful for them and possibly society… that will bought and paid for those who willingly submit themselves to the usual pipeline (at increasing expense).

Well I did preface with unless…, but we are talking about the loss of people who start a STEM career and don’t finish. It is not an efficient use of resources to have people start a long career path and not finish. What has happened is more men are now dropping out so as a cohort they have the same chance of finishing as women.

As for why this is happening yes I agree with you that even men have figured out that the the whole STEM career path is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme designed to exploit idealistic young people. As someone who loves science this makes me so angry I can’t politely put it into words - by this I mean the running of science as a Ponzi scheme, not people realising this is the case.