Academia is a ridiculous racket at this point. The ratio of people that can make a living doing research to people that are entering PhD programs is way, way o

Academia is a ridiculous racket at this point. The ratio of people that can make a living doing research to people that are entering PhD programs is way, way off, which naturally produces a zero-sum hypercompetition "market" among PhD students that can only end in "success" by people able and willing to work crazy hard for no money for years on end - aka the already-rich, the desperate true believers, the delusional, or some combination of those three. To make things worse, all the money in universities is being sucked up by the explosion of the self-licking ice cream cone of middle management catering to the "student experience" or whatever else. Look up the absolute explosion of management salaries in universities in the last 20 years.