I get your point but choosing Chinese phones as a trust example is hilarious. Every Chinese phone has a backdoor straight to China.
How exactly would you leave Australia by train?
It would almost certainly follow an approximate normal distribution just like the above graph. Why would it look different?
Average is the mean, not median or mode. This doesn’t change on context. Average is always mean.
I’ve been making six figures while getting my PhD. There are plenty of opportunities to get your PhD funded if you are a US citizen. There are plenty more valid places to poke fun at pursuing a PhD but it is very common to have funding and thus no debt.