It's quite likely some people will come out of reading this thinking we should stop sending people to grad school. Shouldn't we instead take this as a signal that it needs improvement?
Grad students are one of the very few subpopulations of humanity allowed to take on extraordinary epistemological risks; a kind of immune system of our civilization. I'm not even talking about some elusive notion of "progress", just [intellectual] societal health. It would feel to me like a tremendous loss if we let go of such a component of society.
You are assuming that the institutions are making worthwhile "epistemological risks"; when, clearly, there is a lack of the facilitation of the knowledge of Fourier Mathematics (e.g. the Fourier Transform) in virtually every scientific discipline. Yet this is what most of these researchers involve themselves with everyday with their digital computations. Isn't it ironic, don't you think?
Grad students are one of the very few subpopulations of humanity allowed to take on extraordinary epistemological risks; a kind of immune system of our civilization. I'm not even talking about some elusive notion of "progress", just [intellectual] societal health. It would feel to me like a tremendous loss if we let go of such a component of society.