Further, the incentives are misaligned. I wonder if we (USA) restored government funding for higher ed, would college programs be more honest about graduation rates and job placements.
In a crude sense, more career options swing the relationship in favor of the employees vs employers, so it can be used as a guideline for whether a career will be rewarding and fairly compensated.
I would argue people in academics are on average harder workers than other fields, so overall they have it a bit tougher given all the work they put in. There are successes in every field, I am just making some vast generalizations for our discussion :-)