Depends on your definition of „better“. Since decisions are always emotionally made and rationalized after the fact, this approach will fall victim to significant amounts of survivorship and post-purchase bias.

Life doesn’t have an A/B Test and time tends to make things golden in retrospect — so it‘s hard to compare with what you could have done instead with your only truly non-renewable resource.

I would at least not recommend making a PhD if you don‘t love academia itself.