> Everyone starts a PhD with love for knowledge This isn't true, especially in stem and the sciences. > They are better off with a Masters and having a good c

> Everyone starts a PhD with love for knowledge This isn't true, especially in stem and the sciences. > They are better off with a Masters and having a good career and then spending spare time on pursuing knowledge. In most places I'm aware of, a terminal master's degree or a master's degree program is a degree mill and a racket, costing tens of thousands for a course ofstudy that's too short to teach students much anything useful, let alone provide real knowledge or understanding. Every single person I know who has a stem PhD is doing interesting, cutting-edge work, and almost everybody they work with has a PhD, too. The kids with a BS in CS, by contrast, almost never wind up with jobs in those settings. They almost never get jobs at Microsoft Research. They don't get paid to think. > the trouble is to sustain that love if your bowel is hungry, your clothes are old and torn and you are unable to give your kids a decent accomodation Again, this simply isn't true. This wasn't my experience or the experience of anybody I went to school with or met when I was in acadenia. PhD programs in the US are funded and usually pay poorly in absolute terns but well enough. And grad-student insurance is usually quite good if you're in the US. A PhD from a good program opens doors and pays for itself many times over, sometimes materially, sometimes in ways that are difficult to quantify.