Of course academia is not a cult. Cults offer a sense of belonging.
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Calling the skills learned useless is neither accurate nor...useful. But the sense of feeling (if not actually being) locked in is real enough.
It may have been a hyperbole, but many of the skills learned in PhD programs and postdocs are only useful in academia.
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Fair enough—I agree—but which skills and in what programs? Many of the skills learned in med school are only useful in operating rooms (I hope). But that’s not what you mean. The utility of knowledge is historically contingent—useful for what and to whom? For how long?
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Many of the students in my PhD program, Systems Biology at Harvard, spent much of their time pipetting in liquids between tubes. The paper reading/writing can be generally useful if you stay in research, but was actively dangerous for my job at Google ;).
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This statement is true of basically everything. Is the criticism that academia isn't a generic job training program? Because if what you're looking for is generic job training, a PhD is a terrible approach.
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