Are PhDs a pyramid scheme?

If you are a professor in academia you are supposed to form/train new PhDs. In the past, those new PhDs would go to other universities and then train new PhDs, and their PhD students would go to other universities repeating this process ad infinitum. At some point, 20 years ago, 30 years ago—I don’t really know—we reached PhD saturation in academia. There were way too many PhDs for the number of available positions in universities.

It should be obvious by now that thinking of the package [getting a PhD + job in academia] is close to believing in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus or whoever is your favourite imaginary character. This doesn’t mean that you should not study a PhD, but that there should be a clear consideration that you will (most likely) have to work outside academia.

I struggle with this as a supervisor. I cannot in good conscience supervise a project *unless* I can see that the project/topic will set the student with skills to work for industry or some other avenue that is not a university.

In my personal opinion, PhDs for future academics are indeed a pyramid scheme.