A doctorate course is a pathway to destruction. Cultivated human talents have been thrown down the drain.

He's an idiot

He should add: in humanities. In science, myself and most of the people I know who got a Ph.D. have nice careers, in industry or academia. There is a huge difference in the job market, and in the amount of time involved and skills gained in the process between a guy who gets a PhD in science or engineering, and a guy who studies the menu of coffee shops in Asia or the letters of expats from India 100 years ago (both real cases).

My sister had a PhD. It’s only ever served her well. She’s been extremely successful in life.

When I first came here all (Japanese) academic staff had tenure, from research assistant (助手・助教) up.

Nowadays, as a rule, only full professors get tenure and everyone else is on contracts. Of course, the contracts are limited to five years so that you cannot convert the job to a permanent position. They have a kind of tenure track system at some universities but I don't know what the success rate is.

University bosses these days are obsessed with money; I'm not sure I would recommend an academic career to anyone now.

I have a cousin and a nephew with PhDs, both have successful careers in their fields, neither of them are lecturers. There are other careers beside university lecturing.

The word for this in the United States is "adjunctification." Fifty years ago, probably 75% of all 4-year college and university classes in the United States were taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty members. Now it's more like 25%, with the remaining 75% of classes being taught by adjuncts, visiting assistant professors, lecturers, teaching assistants, etc. Sounds like working in higher education in Japan has gone down the same path of irregular employment, with half of university lectures nationwide being given by part-timers.

I think it's downright crazy to pursue a proper academic career in Japan (teaching ESL at a university with nothing more than a master's degree doesn't count), with the number of people of entering freshman age (18) every year being so much lower now than 20-30 years ago. It's actually a bad idea in most OECD countries. Birth rates in the U.S. went off a cliff after the 2008 financial crisis, so education experts there are predicting a demographic apocalypse for colleges and universities by the end of the next decade.

Studying for a doctorate is learning more and more about less and less as one's perceptual vision and thinking is voluntarily narrowed to a small spot. This is not the universal fate of PhDs but, for most, defines their intellectual limits and reinforces a sense of personal competence and authority rarely justified by actual insight and behavior. And, as Einstein pointed out (from personal knowledge?) being a 'good student' does not require extraordinary intellectual gifts, just hard work. And, yes, perhaps highly 'successful' CAREERS but at what cost to actually experiencing 'LIFE' or seeing beyond one's personal perceptual trench? Few of the people who actually create our intellectual worlds waste time pursuing such narrowness. But, if one wants to spend their whole life dedicated to doing just one thing, what could be better for them? But, it is hierarchy whose values are based not upon native talent but upon naked Authority, the PhD as badge of such Authority, and a bowing to the title rather than to the recognized competence of a Human being whose nonPhD voice is deliberately diminished. People who 'think differently' have very difficult times when delusion leads them into a PhD program. Again, this is not a universal result. Some can shake off a PhD and think creatively but, usually by that time, programmed thinking has taken hold and little internal intellectual freedom remains and the death knell of an 'interesting' life, 'career', sounds. In short, a PhD course is just an apprenticeship into a limited intellectual/perceptual world from which there is little chance of escape. In a way, it's really just an administrative convenience for employers.