Ok, but not what this article is about at all. Six figures is for undergrads. The issue here is that PIs don’t have the money to support graduate students, who are typically fully supported.

It's simple. The US used to be the most desirable place for immigrants and the US higher education system used to be the envy of the world and now for both of these it is not any more. A reset was always inevitable.

> bringing the cost-value equation back to a defensible reality.

I firmly believe looking at academia through this lens is part of the reason why it has been so firmly exploited as a business.

To treat the school as a business in partnership with corporation treats the student as the customer and product. Like everything in our time, the push for profit leads to optimization and enshitification.

The student experience, student outcome, and quality of academia have all been sent through the enshitification wringer.

We can point to the lowering in quality of research to this, the reliance on poorly paid grad students, which end up producing worse work, worse research, and less effect on industry.

I firmly believe there needs to be a degree of separation between academia and corporate interests.

To optimize for profit finds local maxima and limits the ability of academia to do real research.

Not really relevant to this article, which is about graduate students in research programs, who get a stipend and don't pay anything. Of course, low stipends are also a big detractor for potential students

This is about research, science research in particular. "Preparing for the workforce" is not the point here (and arguably should not really be the point of education in general, but much can be said about that...).

You speak of "market" and "cost-value" and economic darwinism. You seem to be confused: many things do not work based on next-quarter revenue optimisation, fundamental science research being one of them.

there are tons of alternative ways to get education , or do research