This is one of the stupidest articles I have seen in a long time. I could just as easily write an article about "The number of professors today with US citizen parents is at an all-time low" based on Figure #1 of this article but it wouldn't be politically correct so it would never be published by the washington post.
Note that public funding for grad students really exploded in the 1960's so there are just a hell of a lot more PhDs running around today because their degrees were paid for by the US government. In the 1950's and earlier, PhDs were paid for with something called CASH (not credit), from the POCKET of the parents of the PhD - a concept that we just don't have any more today ...
https://www.aip.org/statistics/reports/trends-physics-phds-1...
Note that public funding for grad students really exploded in the 1960's so there are just a hell of a lot more PhDs running around today because their degrees were paid for by the US government. In the 1950's and earlier, PhDs were paid for with something called CASH (not credit), from the POCKET of the parents of the PhD - a concept that we just don't have any more today ...