What is a PhD Really Worth?

1. You learn how to think rigorously about complex ideas in graduate school. Believe it or not, that is valuable in any career.

2. You are free to work on projects that are ridiculously ambitious in graduate school. Show me a VC willing to fund a (tech-sector) project with a ten-year R&D cycle (actually, if you're out there, contact me!)

3. The academic culture is quite nice for folks of a naturally intellectual persuasion. The business culture is rife with lax ethical practices and hand-wavy belief systems that, for a certain type of person, can be draining to deal with. Academia has some of this, but its not even close to being of comparable magnitude.

tl;dr - we learn how to get by with less...

Thanks Nature, I'm glad that the main value you see in our spending 4+ years in advanced scientific study amounts to building a healthy respect for free food.

In pure economic terms, yes, the PhD seems almost always the wrong option. I'm curious about other factors such as general wellbeing and quality of life. Though chasing nonexistent tenure track positions while hopping from postdoc to postdoc probably isn't all that great.. Straight to industry for me.

You don't get a Ph.D. for the money...everyone knows that. You get it so you can be a professional researcher (if that is in fact what you want).