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Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

Because your family is rich enough for you to remain out of the job market all those extra years. I wouldn't be surprised if the PhD becomes a new indicator of wealth and power once everyone realizes how uneconomical it is.

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Very few people from my science PhD program were from rich families. I can’t remember what everyone’s parents did, but it was mostly things like nurses, teacher, civil servant, and Christmas Tree farm owner. Professors’ kids were over-represented, but it wasn’t like a pack of Rockefellers and Kennedys. Also, you’re not really “out” of the job market; you’re doing the most viable first step for landing an R&D job.

I knew fewer folks in the humanities, but you might be right there: some were certainly doing this on a lark.

How did you form this opinion? Family wealth has almost nothing to do with an individual's financial ability to do a PhD. You don't pay tuition and you receive nominal wages to support yourself. It's not a tech salary, and there's a major opportunity cost for delaying your entry to industry (if you eventually go that route), but that doesn't mean you need a rich benefactor to sponsor you for five or six years.

A PhD is financially viable for anyone who could make ends meet while working at Best Buy. Most people working on a PhD have no family or mortgage.

This is only accurate for funded PhDs, which in the humanities (the implicit focus of the Chronicle) are a small minority.

Okay that's a fair point, my experience has only been with funded PhDs.

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