Are PhD Programs a Scam?

Like so much in academia, this is out of balance. How many PhDs does the world need? Doctoral graduates vastly outnumber jobs in academia

I actually made this determination in the 1980s. People I knew, with PhDs from top notch universities couldn't find any positions, or the ones they did find were in horrible places, and no matter where you ended up, if you ended up in academia, you were treated as (slightly above) slave labor for the tenured research professors. I got out, and I'm glad I did.

The number of doctoral graduates globally has been growing steadily over the past few decades. And in countries such as China and India, those numbers are exploding.

Conventionally, the doctorate was a stepping stone to a lifelong career in academia. But today, the number of PhD graduates vastly exceeds the number of job openings at universities and research institutions. Researchers say that many universities are not preparing graduates for a career outside academia.

So if you knew that you wouldn't get a job as a professor or researcher, would you spend the time to get a PhD? If you knew you would spend your entire career teaching remedial courses, would you think it was worth it?

I have friend, who basically spent her career teaching remedial math to college students who didn't realize that they needed it for business. She always had work; she never got tenure. An acquaintance (a friend's brother) is a professor at some university in the middle of nowhere. He did get tenure, but he had to uproot his family, with kids in high school, to get it. So again, is it worth it? (I'm not sure the kids feel it was.)