Focuses very much on a Ph.D. in English, which is in some ways the worst rather than the average case.

However, the argument that getting a Ph.D. is getting harder while its (financial) value is decreasing seems correct to me. That might not actually be a bad thing, and is very much to be expected - the market value of doing cool and interesting things goes down as the value of tedious or dangerous jobs goes up. I think we will see even more of that in the future.

We keep complaining about people maximizing their profits rather than happiness. But then, when some choose to pursue their interests and get PhD's in areas that aren't so hot in the industry, we criticize them for bad career decisions. Maybe everything's OK with the system, after all.