Indi, we can have a long long chat on Ph.D and monetary gain. Yes, PhD is all money money and money. to survive a prof has to win funding, to get tenured a prof has to win funding, to hire work horses like me/u profs have to win funding. The more funding they win the more will be their salary. Some univs only pay a part of a faculty's salaray the rest he/she have to get by winning money. A collaborator of my prof gets more than 150k per year as his salary. he writes a new proposal every 10 days -some small ones some big ones Even to enter as a faculty the poor person needs to have won funding, otherwise, no one will take him. Its a pretty stressful life. They also have to publish papers, otherwise there is less chance of winning funding. Not all PhDs go to academia. They might opt for industry where they work for someone else. They will get good money. A person starting as a post-doc under a faculty does not get much. And, there is always a chance of a post doc remaining always as a post-doc. (I don't know about arts field ko hai, at least science field ma yastai huncha)