Education yes, research unfortunately no. I'm not saying research outside of academia is not possible, I'm just saying it's not taken seriously and this needs to change. We really do need to go back to the 19th century model of the researcher gentleman.
A real shock to academia is that top research increasingly takes place outside universities. On many areas universities are now 5-10 years behind what’s happening in the private sector. That’s causing a lot of panic within the system and a growing stream of departures as PhDs favor the private sector over academic tracts.
A few years ago, when I was actively involved with the academic world, I came to a similar realization. They're trying to do too many things at once. Universities need to acknowledge this reality and adjust.
After thinking about it, I came up with a straightforward solution (at least in STEM): offer more than one type of of doctoral degree. Every program will have at least two doctoral programs: a Doctor of Philosophy, and a Doctor of Science/Engineering/Mathematics/etc.
The Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program is academia at its core, where the students in this doctoral program are explicitly seeking an academic teaching or research position as their career path. The coursework and educational activities are explicitly aligned for this area.
The Doctor of Science/Engineering/Mathematics is focused on creating a top-of-the-line researcher intended for industry or an FFRDC. Those students receive a different type of education which explicitly gives them the deeper research skills and connections needed to become an accomplished industry researcher.
The two programs are equally rigorous but have different end goals in mind. This specialization is overdue, and most departments already have a fuzzy line separating the "academics" from the "practitioners."
This just kind of sounds like a random idea that sounds good in your head but not based in reality; the point of a PhD has always been one thing, and one thing alone: train someone who can publish influential papers in top-tier venues.
Anyone who says otherwise is just either uninformed or selling a dream.
I've seen the ins-and-outs of academia within an R1 research institution from about as top-level as one can while remaining a student, and my idea is based on extensive interface with the reality of academia.
Your observation that the doctoral degree system has always been that way is precisely my point: the world has changed, and new forms of training are needed to complement the paper-publishers. The PhD system is broken in part because it's catering to multiple audiences when it should regain its focus on its core mission. That being said, many people want to do research but don't want to work in academia; in fact, I think their numbers are far greater than the academia-oriented. My idea caters to those people, and I think all parties (students, schools, industry, government, the general public) will benefit in this arrangement with almost no drawbacks.
From a degree-focused perspective, it's somewhat unusual that U.S. universities almost exclusively assign PhDs, save for the professional degrees (e.g., MD, PharmD, JD). Multiple types of bachelors and masters degrees exist, and those degrees are certainly differentiated from one another. In some European countries, the ScD is a terminal degree higher than a PhD.
That is how it should be, and how it has historically been.
There has been an unsustainable inflation of academic research on the last 150 years or so after governments decided to formalize research. But the thing about unsustainable stuff is that they always end.
The institutions that teach researchers also doing the majority of it necessarily turn into a Ponzi scheme.
Research is usually a collaborative effort nowadays. You’d need a League of Research Gentlemen. Not to mention that an important number of research fields require expensive research labs/equipment.
