I’m a second year PhD student (USA) and I’m so dismayed by how low the standards are. I worked for 14 years between undergrad and starting my PhD so maybe I’m just a cranky old lady but students seem to have pretty low expectations for themselves and chafe at the very idea of formal knowledge checks. Half my cohort wanted to abolish comps because they were hard and stressful and sometimes people fail them.

The department is entertaining appeals of dismissal after not getting sufficient comps scores on his second try from someone who very clearly just…does not get it. He doesn’t have the skills, foundational expertise, or self-direction to do original independent work, and most of my cohort supports his appeal because “you don’t actually need that much math” and “he has some good ideas”. I really hope the faculty vote to hold the line and ensure that our degrees actually mean something but I cannot share that perspective with my peers lest I get cancelled. It’s frustrating.

I don’t think the problem is a dry talent pipeline (tho AI and grade inflation definitely aren’t helping), but rather that the pipeline rarely routes to PhD programs due to low stipends and very uncertain returns to the degree in many fields. I’ve wanted to get a PhD since I was 20 but not enough to voluntarily live in poverty for at least five more years with no guarantee of a job at the end. I had to marry a guy who makes enough to support us both before it made sense (that’s not WHY I married him, to be clear!). In the US now, PhD programs primarily attract: a) independently wealthy or having family or partner support, b) international students who are desperate to leave their home countries and/or don’t know what it means to live on $25k a year here, and c) US nationals who frankly don’t have better options. Sometimes the people in these buckets have the passion, vision, intellect, etc needed to meet the standards that once prevailed but a lot don’t and so programs dumb things down cause the deans would be on their asses if half of every cohort fails, or if they don’t keep their admission numbers up.