[EthanHeilman]

I'm not arguing against anything you have said, but there is an important connection here that I want to make between disillusionment and funding.

> Besides the people in this thread bemoaning the state of research funding, international students, etc. (all of which are valid), a lot of people are becoming disillusioned with academia. ... grueling work for terrible pay, all for difficult job prospects given the current market.

If there was more research funding and more jobs for researchers in academia this would result in both better pay for PhD students and more academic jobs post-PhD. The disillusionment is related to the funding.

Imagine if the US currently had a new massive project for physics research, you would get a lot more people doing physics Phds and much faster progress in physics. We know this because Edward Teller tricked Reagan into pumping billions of dollars into optics research and that resulted in optics being one of few areas in physics to see breakthrough after breakthrough.