Yeah, there is very little incentive to do well. Especially for U.S. graduate and doctoral students. Even if you do do very well, the best thing that will happen for most of them if they stay in the U.S. is that they will be taken and paid alot of money to not do research for the competition, because no-one really works on anything interesting anymore. All of the cool chemistry and industrial technologies stuff comes from China and Europe.

The problem is that the assumption is that if you had to go do a doctorate, you weren't smart (or connected) enough to dropout and become an entrepreneur. It's a really really bad system that creates huge disincentives from learning about things and pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Instead it the incentive is to learn how to do marketing and graft better.