I'm only on my third exam and my only experience is an internship, so correct me if what I say is really off.

It feels like it's a rite of passage to pass the exams and that helps keep the pay as high as it is. I would much rather study six hundred hours for two exams that kinda help with the job and are really interesting and get a base salary increase of $5K in my first year (not including performance/title raise and COLA) than gamble on asking my manager or transferring jobs to get the same raise within my first year of working.

Also, to be a data scientist or a lot of other stats-related jobs, you generally need a masters whereas we need just a bachelor's. We don't have to take on extra student loans, so that's $30K+ saved right there.

If the SOA starts cutting back the exam process, then I bet getting a master's would start becoming the entry-level requirement for the industry. I wouldn't want that because I found getting a decent GPA harder than passing exams.