Are you going to back those wild claims with some facts, links or how-to's? I would very much like to go study a second degree, a Master's, or a PhD but I fear I can't take several years off work to just study (who'll pay for living expenses?).
Come to Europe.
PhD candidates are not treated as students.
They are treated as adults, and get the salary of an (entry-level) engineer with a master degree.
You get paid a living wage to do a PhD in most countries actually.
If this is about (your) kids?
Send them to Europe for higher education. Many universities with great international ranking have virtually no tuition. But they can be quite competitive in terms of getting a passing grade.
Thanks for the encouragement and sorry for my late reply!
Indeed. Chemical Engineer that has always loved programming + InfoSec to include it in some way, shape, or form on what I do...
I took a chance during Covid and was fortunate to land DevSecOps-y roles. Not a 10x engineer by any means, but I have been working my way through Knuth's TAoCP and slowly learning to love lower level.
Living now in the Netherlands, but didn't know that there were such types of benefits to studying a PhD.
I'll definitely need to have a good think (and budgetary assessments as well) ... having to pay rent in the Netherlands due to the (probably artificial) housing crisis feels like a seriously limiting factor to afford studying.
Of course not.
But you might get paid only a 50% salary for a PhD in the natural sciences (or liberal arts).
Different fields have different cultures in that regard.
For hundreds of millions of people they are a basic human right and completely free.
Never had a job? Doesn’t matter, still free.