[coastflow]

I found myself agreeing with much of your comment, except: "For people happy to clock out and try to convince others to do the same, that devalues the experience for others who ARE there to work as hard & creatively as they can to do amazing things with like-minded individuals."

Is there possibly a separation between PhD students who work 9-5 with a mentality of hard work but strong time boundaries, versus PhD students who work 9-5 but don't plan to make the most of the opportunity?

I'm also instinctively wary of any romanticization of a PhD program, especially when working long hours. From anecdotal reports, national labs also provide the resources to do great research, with far more reasonable hours and less of a pressure to work longer hours. I've read of too many reports, which exist even if they are minority situations, where advisors take advantage of the power they have over students, such as in this HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26367099

I believe that doing "amazing things with like-minded individuals" is worthwhile, but can also happen in the private sector where the pay is commensurate to the value of the provided work. In general, I'm very wary of the idea that working longer hours should ever be romanticized, because the potential downsides are severe and should not be underestimated (including physical/psychological health problems due to burnout from long hours and failed relationships/divorce).

[lmeyerov]

Yes, weaker programs already do so. The faculty generally are top notch, and superstar students do seek out individual professors due to whatever alignment and succeed. So IMO it's more about the student, there are definitely places with different expectations already.

Likewise, in industry, it's not the hardest thing to get an r&d gig in say a hospital network or university as a research engineer supporting whatever lab(s). Basically a forever postdoc. Though salary may of course suffer.

One of the biggest things that comes out of a PhD is the ability to formulate and pursue open-ended problems. IMO that comes from (a) apprenticing and (b) repeated success/failure, both of which take time. So yes, you can stretch a PhD longer, or do a weak one and try to learn that later such as a postdoc. It's not hard to sniff out who has done the work / magically rocked it because they are magical / hasn't.