Are there plans that actually only offer actively managed funds? Even the bare bones bottom tier Fidelity plan I had years ago from a notoriously tight pursed startup gave me a few index tracking funds.
Have a look at the total fees for your account/index funds. My experience is that they are not always competitive with the lowest fees in the free financial markets. (3 basis points for Schwab S&P 500 index).
If your company is small or your benefits person clueless, you may have worse funds available to you than in the taxable brokerage world.
I think there are better things to worry about than a couple basis points. If I'm charged 1% for a basic index fund, sure that's a problem. But given the minute fees for most, the inefficiencies from trading strategies could dwarf the explicit fees - if you really care about every penny, you need to look at the actual tracking error. You may be surprised to find it's substantially larger than the fees.[1]
My attitude in practice is that if I'm getting an employer match, then why complain about fees? It's their problem to minimize them - I'm still doing better than I would on my own. The efficiency is their problem, and because they have an incentive to minimize their costs, there shouldn't be a systemic problem.
Yes, it's happily becoming less common, but it was and is common for all options in a 401k plan to have high fees, and be set up to benefit the company
But the beautiful thing is if you don't like the plan you can opt out (or only invest up to the match) and invest in an IRA instead. Can't do that with a pension.
If your company is small or your benefits person clueless, you may have worse funds available to you than in the taxable brokerage world.