The discontented graduate student is something of a cultural fixture in the U.S. Indeed theirs is a sorry lot. They work very hard, earn very little, and have very poor prospects. Nearly all of them want to become professors, but most of them won't. Indeed a disturbingly large minority of them won't even finish their degrees. It's little wonder graduate students are, as a group, somewhat depressed.
In his thought-provoking book
The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It (Harvard University Press, 2015),
Leonard Cassuto tries to figure out why graduate education in the U.S. is in such a sadstate. More importantly, he offers a host of fascinating proposals to "fix" American graduate schools. Listen in.