There is a third way, one in which research is not a full-time endeavour, but is still a part of your life. It's certainly not for everyone, and is not "pure" in the sense that you still need to make a living doing something with market value. I generally work 3 days in industry and do research the other 2 days in a university setting (a PhD program).
My work is in the broad area of my research (e.g. power systems), and while there's no direct overlap, they aren't entirely different spheres. I quite like my work and I find the industry contact important, so while I could easily live on 1-2 days of work, I've chosen a work/research split that is more biased towards work. Having said that, as a freelancer, I have a fairly flexible arrangement and some weeks I don't work at all.
The key advantage of this approach is that I am not at all bonded to the university. I don't have to participate in the politics of academia, grant funding, the pressure to publish, progress reporting etc, which I see the other grad students struggling with. I suppose I still have to massage the egos of tenured professors, but I can live with that (as a consultant, I'm always massaging peoples' egos anyway). The bottom line is that having independent funding insulates me from most of the pain of being a PhD student and gives me the freedom to pursue ideas that may lead to dead ends.
My work is in the broad area of my research (e.g. power systems), and while there's no direct overlap, they aren't entirely different spheres. I quite like my work and I find the industry contact important, so while I could easily live on 1-2 days of work, I've chosen a work/research split that is more biased towards work. Having said that, as a freelancer, I have a fairly flexible arrangement and some weeks I don't work at all.
The key advantage of this approach is that I am not at all bonded to the university. I don't have to participate in the politics of academia, grant funding, the pressure to publish, progress reporting etc, which I see the other grad students struggling with. I suppose I still have to massage the egos of tenured professors, but I can live with that (as a consultant, I'm always massaging peoples' egos anyway). The bottom line is that having independent funding insulates me from most of the pain of being a PhD student and gives me the freedom to pursue ideas that may lead to dead ends.