Ya but, based on the brief resume in your profile, you've also probably made out quite well, no? Is that a completely incidental thing, or do you think you'd feel even a little differently if what you earned throughout your intellectual journey ended up leaving you financially vulnerable, whatever that would mean in your geographic region?
To me it's a question of how much cost a person should reasonably incur in order to pursue one's interests, and I think the amount of people with absurd student loan debt and time spent, compared to their earning potential, is at meme status for millennials and zoomers.
To be clear, I do think the motivations aren't inherently misguided, but they could be, and my guess is that people are taking their potential outcomes more seriously.
In STEM, PhDs are probably not terrible financial outcomes in general (in that they probably mostly avoid a huge amount of student loan debt and may offer a leg-up for some commercial opportunities), but they also may be sub-optimal financially in many cases relative to just landing a job out of academia earlier.
Ya you may be right, at least in terms of expense, but I'm also considering the external cost vs reward even if debt is zero. A woman struck up a conversation with me yesterday at a cafe and we got to chatting. She had already had two careers, first in film, then teaching film, and now starting a PhD in philosophy, which I think is fantastic. But... she's a retired grey hair who owns her home, and the topic of whether her former students or myself would even continue to feasibly attend school or stay present in the community was unavoidable. There was no malice or particularly negative sentiments exchanged in our brief conversation, there didn't need to be, but there was more of an exasperated acknowledgement that there's no possible scenario wherein myself, her students, or her own adult children could secure a house remotely like hers in the broader municipal area by our own means, without winning a literal or figurative lottery with immense career success. Land is too expensive, prospects don't pay enough and they're too volatile.
She wouldn't have been able to either, it was just plausible, though still probably pretty expensive for her at a different time, likely with another income.
It's not impossible to make some pursuits work, but tbh some things are not worth pursuing if they ain't gunna pay. It's an existential crisis that people are well-aware of; why invest ones finite resources into something that won't even let you form a stable adulthood?
Getting a PhD in retirement is great if that's what floats your boat. (I know someone who basically did and another who did as sort of a mid-life crisis.) I don't think I'd have any interest because of all the BS associated with getting a credential. It does provide some structure around an activity. But I just can't personally imagine having that much structure unless I had a real objective in mind.
It is expected, at least where I'm from, that a PhD in an engineering discipline is going to go get a decent tech job. It is not by any means required, so it remains a personal choice and changed the nature or the jobs you'll be offered to a certain extent.
For me, my employability vastly improved when I graduated, and subsequently worked where I did (which was only unlocked because of my grad work).
Well, that's where it's a viable investment, right? I'd presume that if the overall amount of PhDs severely drops, then the ones still pursuing them will be doing so because it's a clear win on the investment front after factoring in the personal expense of doing it. The same would clearly be true of MDs, some careers just have that requirement.
To me it's a question of how much cost a person should reasonably incur in order to pursue one's interests, and I think the amount of people with absurd student loan debt and time spent, compared to their earning potential, is at meme status for millennials and zoomers.
To be clear, I do think the motivations aren't inherently misguided, but they could be, and my guess is that people are taking their potential outcomes more seriously.