Just chiming in to say that this depends on the country quite a bit (although I appreciate this thread is US-focused). UK PhDs have a lot of freedom to choose their research direction, and they&#x27;re generally quite a bit shorter and less of a major life risk.  My PhD was (supervisor &#x27;challenges&#x27; aside...) a really positive experience for me overall, despite the fact that I worked out pretty early on that I didn&#x27;t want to go further in academia.