> If I spend up to 7 years of my life studying and researching my ass off to become one of the foremost experts in a specialized field, then it better have more benefits than just personal satisfaction.

I respect your desire for more money in exchange for more commitment, but we should also recognize that money is but one of many motivators, all of which are ultimately in the service of increasing personal satisfaction.

Perhaps this is a cultural difference. I am not American, and therefore I don't really subscribe to the individualist perspective that everything ultimately serves the purpose of increasing personal satisfaction.

> I don't know... If I spend up to 7 years of my life studying and researching my ass off to become one of the foremost experts in a specialized field, then it better have more benefits than just personal satisfaction.

The only kind of benefits any job can have is subjective "personal satisfaction". The degree to which any particular objective result of employment (e.g., material gain) is an important factor in producing personal satisfaction, of course, varies from person to person.

Personal satisfaction is one of the best outcomes I can imagine. What's more important than personal satisfaction?

Health and safety of your kids and spouse?

I could have gone academic, in fact I could toss it all away and go academic right now. However ... I would never voluntarily make my wife and kids suffer like that. Maybe after I retire it would be safe to go academic.

It boils down to you might be able to fire me up enough to eat ramen and live in a cardboard box because of topic X, but I'd have a hard time looking my kids in the eye and telling them they'll never eat anything better than ramen because dad likes topic X more than them.

That's the screwed up nature of the system. "Everyone knows you HAVE to take a vow of poverty and give up your private life to advance science". Oh really, and why is that? Why isn't it "Everyone knows you HAVE to take a vow of poverty and give up your private life to stamp license plates, but if you wanna be rich go into academia..."

I think the parent's point was all of this is subsumed by "personal satisfaction".

Well, no point in word games but obviously I read "personal satisfaction" and hear "me" as in personal, and you don't. That's OK, but without a common definition there's going to be confusion.

i know plenty of academics with healthy, safe, spouses and children. they eat just fine.

Can't have it both ways. The article says they're not doing as well financially compared to the non-academic path. Well, if you really loved science you'd do it anyway, and its not all about the money, and scientists are supposed to be poor because thats how its always been. OK whatever I'm not doing that to my kids. Oh OK well it turns out that despite the article, the ones I know are doing great. Um nope, its one or the other.

You might have selection bias. All the pro athletes I know of, appear to be financially healthy. That doesn't mean pro basketball is a great plan for kids, given the evidence that 99.99% of kids who want to be pro basketball players end up doing something else, something much less profitable than NBA star... I would theorize this is directly analogous to going into academics.

The winners win. Turns out that winning is, in fact, pretty fun. The losers, well..., that's most of the them, but we're not going to talk about them.

or maybe the problem is that "not doing as well financially" is not identical to "starving to death in poverty"?

Going into a Ph.D for the money is a bit like going into a sport for the laughs. You might well find some, but it's not the point.

Is this a hypothetical or have you actually done a PhD? For people considering a PhD, personal satisfaction had better be enough. If it's not, don't don't don't go to grad school.

>> If I spend up to 7 years of my life studying and researching my ass off

Where did you get the magic number 7 from?

> have more benefits than just personal satisfaction.

It is possible that others have different considerations?