> The “Holy Grail” of true education is exemplified by the professor-doctoral student interaction

I have only known a few people who were at all enamored by the PhD process. Even those who had an overall positive experience speak quite poorly of most of their student-teacher relationships, which seem to range from adversarial to abusive. The best professors are heavily overworked and seem to have little time left for close student interactions. But then all of the people I've worked with who had PhDs left academia, so perhaps it is a case of selection bias.