I know several brilliant people who each spent between eight and eleven years getting their MSc and PhD in computer graphics. In theory, the MSc should take two years and the PhD should take four, but it always takes longer.
Technology moves quickly, but is irrelevant to most computer graphics research. In practice, graphics is often similar to pure math, physics or biology. The fundamentals change slowly, and that's where academic work is usually done.
That said, it is indeed an absurd length of time. A decade is a significant fraction of your life.
