You are right. Many advanced degrees are simply cash cows for universities. Even worse, many undergrad degrees are simply cash cows. You come out of an undergrad education or with a graduate degree with a mountain of debt and no job. And you realize how much better undergrad and grad programs could be if they focused more on what business want and need.
There really does need to be a Congressional investigation of college collusion on pricing and admissions. And the incentives for price inflation need to be taken away. The whole university system is a racket.
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.
Congressional investigation?? They are the ones that are primarilty responsible for the skyrocketing costs of college and grad school. That would truly be a case of the fox guarding the henhouse.
Thomas Sowell has written on this many times.