Comment by __rito__

In all honesty almost all exams are gamed by studying question patterns, studying previous years' papers, etc. There's nothing wrong in that whatsoever.

BUT it is such a toned down, dwarfed down version of what a holistic education should look like. It probably looks like that in undergrad CalTech Physics, maybe. Not much in most places.

People outside think it's so high and holy to be a PhD. It's not for most people.

Most people also go to academia because they can't find other jobs.

Things in Humanities are much worse than STEM, as there are much more subjectivity, favouritism, nepotism, groupism involved.

'Research' nowadays in most fields and institutions is nothing like whatever grand vision people tend to have: Faraday or Bell Labs, Maxwell or Bohr, Feynman or Bletchly Park.