Depends what field you go into. I have a young relative who is getting a PhD in biological research at a well-known university. Free tuition and a $25k plus stipend, which is essentially pay for work he does in the lab but it is in the field he is going into. So they are paying him to learn more about his field.
End result? Free PhD in a hot field. Value? Almost a quarter million bucks over five years. Obligation to the university? None. They just expect their grads will do great things, which maintains or improves the school’s academic reputation.
He applied to several other schools and all were offering him the same deal.
Been there, done that.
The path is rosy as long as Uncle Sam funds the NIH/NSF big time, in fields in which you can compete for extramural funding (hard to predict while you are training — long hours for short $$). Limited positions are available in the private sector for all the grads they churn out, and most are very competitive. And if you have the wrong skin color and genitalia (i.e., not a source of brownie points under EEOC criteria) the deck will very much stacked against you in academia or gov’t. Best advice—save your money once you complete the PhD program to retrain as a DDS or MD (on your savings), or figure out a way to become an entrepreneur and/or self employed. Can’t tell you how many friends and colleagues have been dead-ended after entering the NIH training grinder....