CANADA: PhD offers little salary difference

Earning a PhD does little to boost earnings compared with those who graduate with just a masters degree, according to a national survey. Canada's student lobby pinned the blame for the relatively low earning power of the PhD on what they see as the casualisation of the university labour force.

Statistics Canada's 2007 National Graduates Survey found that, two years after leaving university, those with a doctorate earned on average C$65,000 (US$55,283) a year, only $5,000 more than the $60,000 earned by those with a master's degree. The gap between the two degrees barely widened since the last version of the survey, which takes the pulse of recent graduates every half-decade: the earlier salary difference was $4,605, just $395 less than five years later.

The survey also revealed that PhDs finished their studies with higher debt loads, reporting a 7% jump since the 2000 cohort of PhD graduates who had said they had difficulty repaying their student loans. The average debt for the 70% of 2005 graduates who still owed loans two years after earning their doctorates was $22,500.

The narrow earning gap between doctoral and masters graduates worries the Canadian Federation of Students. Chair of the group's national graduate caucus, Graham Cox, told University World News that PhD graduates in Canada were not benefiting from their extra time in university.

Cox said he actually saw the gap as narrower than it was five years earlier when debt loads and tuition fees were considered, both of which have increased. The difficulty paying off debt was partly a result of the lack of tenured positions available to those who recently graduated, and a lessening of government contracts for those with PhDs.

"It used to be that you could graduate from university with a bit of debt and then get a good job. But there are bleak opportunities for those with PhDs," he said.

There are no firm statistics on part-time professorships in Canadian universities but Cox, through his caucus, has heard of many hiring freezes of tenured faculty and believes PhD and masters graduates are being used as a cheap labour pool. He said the higher education sector's reliance on part-time lecturers was keeping PhDs from gaining a better footing.

The survey also found that those with only a masters degree fared slightly better than their doctoral counterparts in finding work. Two years after graduation, about 86% of masters graduates were working full time, compared with 84% for doctorate graduates.

In Britain in 2006-07, graduates with a doctorate earned an annual salary of £28,481 (about US$55,800 on 1 January 2007) while those with a masters degree were paid £23,832 or 16% less. Figures for salary differences between holders of the degrees in Australia, France and New Zealand were not available.

philip.fine@uw-news.com

Comment:

Good analysis. It resembles the situiation, more or less, in developing countries. In Nepal, par-time lecturerd are cheaper. Therefore, most of the colleges prefer part-time teacherd rather than having full-time qualified (PhD holders). A simple survey of some representative countries may provide more clarity and provide ground for comparision.

Rajendra P. Adhiksri