The old joke that isn’t funny

There is an old joke in academia that the letters Ph.D. stand for “Pile it Higher and Deeper.” As crude as it sounds, there is a certain uncomfortable truth to it. In many industries — from automotive mechanics to economic research — there is a widening gap between those who create, build, and serve versus those who document, theorize, and critique. Over time, this division has created a form of class structure that most people do not openly talk about: a pride class and an academic class. Unfortunately, the rise of purely academic validation — particularly in business and economics — often stifles the very entrepreneurial spirit that leads to genuine progress and innovation.

In the real world, success is about building relationships, designing solutions, solving real problems, and making things work. In contrast, much of the academic and economic world has become obsessed with getting the “right” citations, referencing the “right” politically acceptable authorities, and writing papers that are technically perfect but often practically useless. As the writer and economist Thomas Sowell has noted, “Intellectuals have trouble believing that anything could be so simple that it does not require their complicating expertise.” Sowell’s point strikes at the heart of the problem: real-world results are messy, fast, and require courage — not endless refinements of footnotes.

In business development and entrepreneurship, the goal is simple: solve a problem that matters and do it in a way that is sustainable. The real-world entrepreneur does not have the luxury of endlessly debating theory or waiting for peer approval. They have to act, pivot, learn from mistakes, and often get bruised along the way. Yet the economic and academic establishment tends to reward those who “play the game” — who polish their papers, perfect their presentations, and align their language with the latest fashionable theories. As Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, famously said, “Academia is to entrepreneurship what medieval theology was to science: a roadblock masquerading as a shortcut.”

The constant need for academic validation can be a heavy burden. It promotes a type of behavior that is more about fitting in than standing out. In economics especially, there is often more emphasis on citing others than on creating new models. Instead of testing new business models in the field, many young minds are trained to endlessly refine predictive equations and spend years working toward a publication that may be read by a handful of fellow academics — and ignored by everyone else who actually needs solutions. This environment suppresses bold, entrepreneurial energy.

Furthermore, the social hierarchy that emerges between the “doers” and the “thinkers” creates unnecessary tension. In the world of automotive design, for instance, it is often the mechanics and field engineers who find and fix real problems — not the Ph.D. researchers who publish theoretical papers on friction coefficients. Yet it is the latter who tend to enjoy greater prestige, salaries, and influence, despite the fact that without the former, nothing would function.

This dynamic is not new. Even during the industrial revolution, there was tension between those who worked with their hands and those who theorized about management from afar. What has changed is the degree of institutionalization. Today, credentialism — the bias toward degrees, titles, and academic achievements — has hardened into a near-religious belief system. Economist Bryan Caplan, author of The Case Against Education, points out that the majority of the value of modern education is signaling — proving to employers that someone can jump through hoops — rather than true skill acquisition. Caplan notes, “We are wasting trillions of dollars and billions of hours on a grand credentials race.”

When entrepreneurial spirit is suppressed in favor of paper credentials, society loses. We lose the garage inventors. We lose the next Henry Ford or Thomas Edison. We discourage the natural-born builder from trusting his or her instincts, instead teaching them to defer to layers of self-appointed experts who may have never sold a product, repaired a machine, or hired a worker in their lives.

True economic growth comes from doing, not from documenting. Relationships, trial-and-error, risk-taking — these are the building blocks of wealth and innovation. Academic research has its place, but when it becomes the master instead of the servant, when it crushes the natural instincts of the entrepreneur under a mountain of citations and politically correct verbiage, we end up with a culture of stasis rather than progress.

The lesson is simple, but powerful: Education should be a tool, not a cage. Business development and entrepreneurial success require fluidity, adaptability, courage, and relationship-building — not endless approval-seeking. Those who build real things will always be the lifeblood of any economy. We would do well to remember that, and to reward results rather than rituals