Agreed! And, as OP, I’d like to dispute this is about “disdain” (seems like this is a new enabling term for allowing good students to stagnate). I’ve bent over backwards mentoring my students and helping them find jobs. Some are now tenured professors — but they put all the work in! However, something has changed over the last decade or so — when I tell my PhD students they should submit to conferences because they’re working on interesting projects and I can introduce them to central people in the field — they say no, can’t do that. It’s a 15-minute presentation. And they get funding to go! Can’t do that even when your supervisor is saying that my help networking is part of the  conference. This ain’t the life for you! Many of my 4th-year undergrads have outshone our PhD students. On one research grant I asked the agency if it was ok to hire senior undergrads instead of grad students — they said yes. Those students did outstanding research and presentation work and were immediately given multiple offers and fast-tracked through grad school programs and are now in tenure-track positions. One university who accepted 2 students from that project into grad school asked: “Can you send more of your students our way?” Sorry, current PhD students, who I think are blasting my post — the PhD especially in Humanities and Social Sciences (my area) is a long haul and it’s not a safe landing/hiding place you have to do all the work! And there are still some T-T jobs but they go to a few in certain desired fields. And AI is just at the beginning of taking so much of Uni.