I published a preprint on Zenodo: Research grounding for a bilateral venture capital model of PhD programs

I published a new preprint on Zenodo: Research grounding for a bilateral venture capital model of PhD programs. The DOI for this version is 10.5281/zenodo.19040077.

The core argument is simple: the modern PhD system still relies on a 19th-century apprenticeship structure even though many of its biggest failures are already well understood in contract theory. Attrition, mental health harms, weak placement outcomes, information asymmetry, moral hazard, hold-up, and misaligned incentives are not random accidents. They are structural problems, and venture capital has spent decades building bilateral contracts to manage exactly these kinds of risks.

This preprint is a research compendium that brings together literature across economics, higher education policy, signaling theory, academic labor markets, and AI-and-science discussions to ground that argument. If you are interested in the intersection of doctoral training, institutional design, and incentive alignment, you can read it here: Zenodo record.