When I started engineering undergrad 20 years ago, they told us domestic students grad school only makes sense if you want to be a professor. Why? They put the numbers up! Opportunity cost!

Of course, now the goalposts have moved: American talent must be worse because they don’t have these degrees which are required of foreign students to get in the country. And, of course, grad school working conditions are notably terrible. Exploitable labor lowers working conditions.