Quote (Handcuffs @ May 10 2021 05:54am)
This will undoubtedly vary by field, but at least in Psychology there's a massive pressure to be published. Does it matter if your research is meaningful? Impactful? Referenced? Nope. Just get published. While I certainly do think a part of it is so that people, as you point out, get the experience, it certainly is more than that in Psychology. Our field has a massive replication crisis because there's only a demand for novel research. People would still get the same experience from doing a thesis that involves a replication study of some kind, but that is seen as less-worthy by prospective Ph.D programs. As a result, people complete projects on trivial topics that add nothing but fluff to the filing drawer.
MSc in Electrical Engineering here, only a small amount of the people who graduate will have their master's thesis published. The people who do usually are the ones going for a PhD.
Only the Academic types go for a PhD because there is only small upside to getting one for later job searches. There are companies that have positions that require PhD level knowledge (think ASML in Netherlands for example), but there aren't many. And PhD candidates get paid way less than MSc grads, with MSc grads having good pay lined up when they graduate.