That's a little freaking ironic if you don't mind me saying. A PhD represents it's own authority by virtue of being awarded by the tiny fraction of people in the world who actually understand the problem space you might be studying enough to say "Research accepted. We trust you can take our place as educators and researchers in the future when we are dead."

Also, there's a good reason the Greeks had that archaic way of categorizing knowledge. Hyper-connectivity of all knowledge available at once is a total clusterfuck to deal with from an individual mind perspective. Just because it's old doesn't make it wrong. History repeats itself, etc.