[aroch]

I don't think you have a great grasp on the PhD process in the US

A vanishingly small number of people are paying for their own PhD in the US. You are expected to be _funded_ though. Most programs give you 1-2 years of guaranteed funding (either through research or teaching assistantships) to give you time to find a PI if you didn't start the program with one and apply to grants. Having to secure grants is much different than paying your own way.

Most PhD students are either directly out of a bachelor's program or worked, maybe 2 years, in the field they want to do a PhD in. They're still most definitely in their early to mid-twenties. Are you thinking post-docs?

Length of stay is really dependent on your field of study and your specific work. I have friends who took 3 years to do computationally focused doctorates and some who took 6 years to do biology focused ones. You simply cannot make living things grow faster through sheer force of will.

I guess my last note would be that there's a reason US biology/biochem/bioME PhDs are paid a premium over their European colleagues internationally. And that's probably related to time spent getting their degrees and the depth and breadth of their experiences in the process

[throwaway4585]

Like I said, this is my (limited) experience and that of people I know. It was also a number of years ago. But good on you for taking the time to correct me.

>there's a reason US biology/biochem/bioME PhDs are paid a premium over their European colleagues internationally

Are they though? In many academia institutions wages are fixed.

[aroch]

The vast majority of STEM PhDs are not staying in academia. The handful of recent grads I know who did stay in academia are, as I would put it, in academia-lite. They're in industry and privately sponsored positions or institutes, that pay quite well. Take a look at, say, the Broad Institute at MIT or the Allen Institutes in Seattle. Both are large, academic institutions that pay industry competitive wages.

[throwaway4585]

Oh, then if you're counting industry PhDs I'm not sure how your argument about Americans getting a premium is that well-founded. The US (like many Western countries, but to an even greater extent) has a very strong NIH syndrome, and Europeans themselves are often taught endlessly to sell themselves because they're not assertive enough in their presentations, CVs, SOPs, what have you.

And of course there's the matter that most wages in Europe in the qualified labor force are way lower in general than their American counterparts. I've always thought it was more or less due to research being underprioritized in Europe but maybe that's about to change in the light of current events ;-)