Throughout most of human history workers were trained on the job. To be a hospital laboratory technician in the 1960’s you barely needed a high school diploma. Today, the same role requires at least 6 years of post secondary education, and there is very little opportunity for upward career growth without a PhD.

For the average person this means spending more years either accruing debt, or surviving as an underpaid graduate student, before finally entering the workforce. For society however, the impacts of this trend have had much more worrisome impacts.

Since the 1900’s the average time required for a scientist to conduct the research that would win them a Nobel prize has been steadily increasing. Overall, scientists are starting their careers later, conducting less research overall, and the nature of that research is less innovative. This, coupled broken academic incentive structures, has lead to a decrease in the percentage of disruptive research (research that renders previous research obsolete) in comparison to consolidative research (research that builds on pre-existing research).

Our modern education systems are broken. With an emphasis on rote memorization, the majority of biology courses are taught in a manner that is obsolete in the age of the internet. The amount of practical time students spend in the lab each week is also limited. Undergraduate students primarily conduct research experiments that have been highly optimized for success, and the rest of their time is spent memorizing facts that they will never need to know depending on their field of specialization.