Just one person's perspective but I spent 10's of thousands on a stem degree at a mid tier public university and did some research during undergrad. The program i was in dropped by over 2/3 the number of students from first year to fourth as people changed degrees or dropped out so there was some challenge. I could have stayed in academia to do grad/post grad work for about half the starting pay as working in the public sector or non profits, and higher for corpos. The prospects were non competitive pay for about twice the work to stay in academia at least when I was looking around a decade ago. If I didn't have to take on so much debt for tuition I probably would have stayed.