If I look at medicine as a comparison, when I graduated undergrad (early 90s), medicine was a field with seemingly very strong prospects. Fast forward 20 years, and the prospects in medicine don&#x27;t look nearly as good, and certainly not when weighed against the investment (in time and money) and risk (malpractice, regulatory <i>insanity</i>, etc)<p>I wonder if the same thing happened in academia. If you look at the fundamentals a decade ago and continuing even now (consumption rate growing faster than the consumption of medical services, tuition rates rising MUCH faster than inflation), it&#x27;s reasonable to think that the industry is growing quickly.<p>Whether or not it ought to be, and whether or not that&#x27;s sustainable, I can understand a counter argument that even if the field is saturated now, if the industry growth continues as implied by the fundamentals, it could still be a good choice.<p>Now, if my teenage offspring ask for advice, I&#x27;d tell them to pick something that&#x27;s meaningful and interesting to them and then double-check that they can survive on the value they create. If so, don&#x27;t go chasing further monetary value.