I work at a University as a research assistant in the Biology Department and I am currently studying part-time in a masters of Biostatistics. One of the main reasons (apart from enjoying it) why I began to take statistics seriously was due to a) most of the PhD students lack of knowledge of statistics and b) complete and utter ugh-fieldness in having to do statistics.

I think your reasoning is good (though that just maybe cause it aligns with mine) just don't forget how many companies/corporate jobs there are for data-science now especially when the money seems very good. I have come to the opinion that going into academia via the "traditional" route is flawed and most definitely not for everyone (see shminux's comment) i.e. PhD -> then madly applying for very competitive (depends on field but mostly true?)post-doc positions ->even more competitive faculty job -rinse repeat. Perhaps that's just my hesitance as it seems to be a path of continual narrow specialization with unequally increasing competitiveness.