Only slightly related to the post at hand, but I'm a bit curious what generally motivates people into going into a Masters or PhD program. I stopped my education at the Bachelor's level specifically because I couldn't actively justify what I would need either of the two for outside of monetary incentives. Especially with the push I felt during my undergraduate career towards getting kids into 4+1 or accelerated Masters programs... I wonder if the case of this article isn't all too common in other fields. Or maybe that's just me projecting.
Probably depends on the field. In my field, computer science / software engineering, the consensus is that a Masters will make you a better engineer, but a PhD isn't really useful outside academia. I imagine there are fields (chemistry maybe?) where a PhD is useful in the field. I do think my Masters made me a better engineer. I learned more broad knowledge like graphics and architecture, and I picked a specialisation, parallelism, which is imminently useful.
Funny, in Chemical Engineering it's almost the opposite. A Masters won't get you much farther than a Bachelors but a PhD can open a ton of R&D doors depending on what industry you focus on.