The Economics of PhD

While walking home today on a lonely road at 9 pm today, I suddenly realized something important that never crossed my mind before. If doing a PhD is similar to a real job, then what is its performance metrics? I've heard the saying, "publish or perish", which means professors and graduate students are judged by how many papers they publish each year. But it costs money to run a research lab, lots of money. Where do the money come from? They come from grants and deals that the professor has to go and seek out. The professor writes proposals and try to convince a number of different organizations and sources to fund a particular research project. While doing one project, a grad student can explore related problems and propose new possible solutions, which in turn can be used in new proposals for continued funding. Thus a grad student should be judged by how well they can come up with these deal-making proposal materials in a timely manner, because professors have to pay a lot of money to fund each student.

I would say that is one of the most important thing to realize as a grad student and it's something I need to work on.