In an ideal world you might have a point.<p>However, PHD students on average are <i>very</i> far from world class.  And in just about every case they are simply looking at a problem so unimportant that nobody considered it before, and most likely nobody will ever look at again.<p>It&#x27;s almost always a waste of time for both the student and everyone else involved.<p>PS: There are plenty of counter examples where PHD research happened to be valuable, but that&#x27;s a tiny minority of cases.