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<p>If you can get the PhD, that is. Earning a PhD is hardly automatic. Only approximately half of all incoming PhD students will actually complete the degree, and while some who are unable to complete the program will instead quickly take a consolation master’s, plenty of others expends years of their lives only to receive that consolation master’s at best, and sometimes with no degree at all. I can think of numerous former PhD students who left with no degree. They surely would have been better off had they simply gone straight to the workforce.</p>