HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Ph.D. Programs Have a Dirty Secret: Student Debt. If your Ph.D. program isn’t fully funded, think twice. Hell, think three or four times. And even if it is fully funded, remember that you’re also investing irreplaceable years of your life: “There were over 14 of us when we started and only 4 graduated. There are 3 more that have over 100K debt and are still in the program. They let some of the people ‘hang themselves with their own rope’ by not funding them and those people withered away. The older grad students were left to fend for themselves and also died on the vine.”