I agree. My (future) PhD will not pay for itself in actual dollars, but love of the subject. That is why I am paying for it with my part time job money. No regrets that way.
The moral of the story is that if you're motivation is "personal accomplishment" or "personal interest" or if, for any other reason you do not expect to receive any significant financial benefits from your degree YET you want it to be of high quality and recognized as such by all............go to South Africa. Jack (man, they really ought to be paying me for this sort of promo)
Both my masters and doctoral degrees have been worthwhile investments in terms of employment, salary increases and opportunities for outside professional consulting.
My degrees paid for themselves...total cost to me was about 3K out of pocket for an AA, 2 BS's, an MS, and MBA, and four classes into a PhD. Got to love tuition assistance
I'm not a Phd or anything near it...but my AS degree was a factor in a promotion I recieved that has since raised my standard of living. At the time I didn't have the degree completed, but the fact that I was pursuing it demonstrated to my employer that I was serious about my job. It has paid for itself twice over. As a side note though....when all is said and done, I do plan on getting a purely personal satisfaction degree...like an MPA or a MS in History....just cause I love the content. But that's when I'm comfortably retired.
