I have my PhD, and this is the standard angst that many aspiring students face. There's a reason we have the term "ABD" for All But Dissertation. If he got that far into grad school without realizing that a Professor is an entrepreneur - hiring employees (grad students) to produce his product (knowledge) which he sells to customers (government and industry) through sales and marketing (conferences and papers) - then he was just naïve or kept the blinders on. My solution was to graduate and go into industry.
Exactly. My brother cut short his PhD and got a M.S. when he realized the life of a professor was basically being a manager with employees that were harder to fire. If he wanted to be a manager, he'd have gotten an MBA.
Yes; it leads to unexpected consequences. The worst students are the ones the that the professor has the most incentive to graduate. So paradoxically the better you are, the less likely you are to be done quickly.
