Agreed 100%. As a grad student, I made so many mistakes, destroying expensive equipment in the process. I took a 3 year leave of absence to join a startup and w

Agreed 100%. As a grad student, I made so many mistakes, destroying expensive equipment in the process. I took a 3 year leave of absence to join a startup and was taken back without question when it failed. I went on intellectual flights of fancy on a whim when I found things interesting without telling my PI, wasting precious time and missing deadlines. I took classes and then dropped them when I got too busy, wasting my PI’s grant money. I was given tasks to accomplish and failed them miserably. He tolerated all of it because I was a student and the expectations were set accordingly. As a professor today, I take the same attitude toward my students, and I think it’s for their benefit. If they want to be treated as employees, the bar for admission becomes a lot higher, and the expectations do as well. The capacity for mistakes goes down, and the latitude and freedom afforded to them to explore their interests goes away entirely. Employees do what they’re told when they’re told it, and they are paid accordingly. I’m not sure that’s what many PhD students actually want when they say they want to be treated as employees.