Also, being told "should" by people about this life decision that means losing huge amounts of real money - opportunity cost is a real loss of money in economics - is really messed up in my opinion as someone who was in a PhD program for 3.5 years after college and lost over $400,000 over my lifetime as a result. People are always going around telling people what one "should" do about the PhD question as if it's some theoretical idealistic thing instead of a real actual person who's life is going to get impacted. It's like, who are you to tell anyone what they should do, let alone about something that will cost them so much? It's messed up. This is my opinion.