I didn't see anything mentioning chemistry/science in the commentary, so forgive me if I'm repeating something I missed... The PhD is not "just for academia".

I didn't see anything mentioning chemistry/science in the commentary, so forgive me if I'm repeating something I missed... The PhD is not "just for academia". It's the entry ticket for working in the biotech/pharma business. It's a 4-6 year process that demonstrates that one can do independent work in an organized fashion and write it up. Quite similar, except for scale, as how medicinal chemists (and various support disciplines) work. One learns the jargon, often combines a complementary post-doc to round out training (such as synthetic PhD following up with natural product p-doc). This extra nudge improves the chance of being hired and can usually lead to more $$ upon hiring. PhD's usually know 1-2 things well. P-docs, maybe, push that up to 3-5. It's a basis for getting started. Is the entry-ticket aspect of a PhD fair to BS/MS students, who tend to be the lab denizens who actually do the work? No, probably not. There's a huge status difference between "PhD" and "pair of hands"... But then, as the difference is only 2-ish years, carrying through to PhD should be the typical choice (barring real-life issues forcing termination). Due to job/geographic stability, it's not the best career choice, but it's a useful one (as, for example, they actually DO work towards curing or alleviating disease). The pay is reasonable, the chance for personal recognition is present and there's chances for "financial renumeration" if one scores big-time. And if groups like YC get really into funding longer-horizon projects, the jobs just might reappear.