As others have said, a PhD may be worth it if and only if you don't expect a job in academia at the end. But that's a long time not spent on one's career, and boy, that love for the subject has to be really strong.
For the vast majority of people I don't think it worthwhile. I said in another thread like this one that I don't think most people in academia want to be rich and famous, but they should expect a reasonable material existence. Academia currently doesn't deliver that. As Louis Menand points out in The Marketplace of Ideas, median times to a PhD degree is now hitting seven years in the sciences and ten in the humanities.
As others have said, a PhD may be worth it if and only if you don't expect a job in academia at the end. But that's a long time not spent on one's career, and boy, that love for the subject has to be really strong.
For the vast majority of people I don't think it worthwhile. I said in another thread like this one that I don't think most people in academia want to be rich and famous, but they should expect a reasonable material existence. Academia currently doesn't deliver that. As Louis Menand points out in The Marketplace of Ideas, median times to a PhD degree is now hitting seven years in the sciences and ten in the humanities.
That's a very, very long time in a person's life.