In computer science, your criticisms are very very valid for graduate students: they make ~30k&#x2F;year when they could be making ~200k&#x2F;year at, say, Google, and they usually have less autonomy than a professor. But they don&#x27;t really apply to tenure-track faculty. <i>If</i> grad school is already a sunk cost for you, (or it was valuable to you in other non-monetary areas), a tenure-track position can actually be quite a lucrative choice.<p>Firstly, CS professors make a decent salary. A professor at Berkeley (all salaries are publicly available for California state schools) make ~160k&#x2F;year. Someone like Michael I. Jordan makes ~300k&#x2F;year. And if you work in a field directly applicable to industry, such as machine learning, this figure does <i>not include the substantial consulting&#x2F;advising revenue</i> that is available to you.<p>Furthermore, tenured faculty can go do a startup and then come back at <i>any time</i> for their old job.<p>Granted, a professor in CS could probably be making millions per year in finance or something, but my point is in absolute terms you can make a lot of money.