[asabjorn]

If you are high skill enough to do a PhD in anything meaningful, why enter into an open-ended low-paid work contract with a professor with no definite end-date on when the PhD is granted? An american has even less incentive, as the reward of a work permit is not on the other side.

Only reason should be that you want to be a professor, research can be done in private companies without this license. 95% of a PhD is worth as much as 0%.

[michaelt]

> why enter into an open-ended low-paid work contract with a professor with no definite end-date on when the PhD is granted?

This is less of a problem than you might imagine. While no school will guarantee to give you a degree regardless of your performance, it's pretty close. They don't offer the limited funded spots to anyone they don't think can make it.

The real compromises are that people go into their PhD thinking they're going to cure cancer and become a professor at Harvard, and come out of it having made a 5% improvement to a model for predicting the risk of one particular complication following treatment for one particular type of cancer, knowing that becoming a professor at Podunk College would take another decade of work. Or the decide to quit once they discover the reality of it.

The under-paid indefinite purgatory period is called the postdoc.

[novia]

Often private companies list a PhD as a requirement for research roles

[rs186]

There are very few of such roles. Of course PhD is often an advantage when it comes to job application and promotion, but outside very specific roles (think about OpenAI looking for a PhD in LLMs, or Intel looking for a PhD in certain engineering fields), it's more often a nice-to-have.

[jcarrano]

In my rather limited experience, private research was way more productive and enjoyable and I was able to do it and get things working without a PhD. In fact, during my short stay a iRobot I was quite surprised to find that none of the PhD's there could help me with what I was doing or provide guidance.

Later I worked with PhDs and PhD candidates in a university setting. What shocked me the most was the narrowness of their knowledge and their lack of consideration for practical matters.

I'd rather let the market judge my work than an academic committee.

[taurknaut]

Tenured teaching positions are also in freefall right now.