Academia appears glamorous to those who have never been in grad school and the allure dies very quickly and very violently for many students.

Yes, there is bullshit in any job, but academia is more competitive, more deceiving, and ultimately more devastating to fail in than most other jobs.

• About 1 in 20 PhD actually make it through to a tenure-track position.

• Most who make the attempt are often mired in endless post-doc positions that pay poorly.

• Failing at academia can impact your self-worth more than most other failures. Most failures in career involve lack of opportunity, lack of training/experience, or lack of work ethic. Failure in academia means all of that plus a lack of talent/intellect. Not everyone is smart enough to be a professor, which can be a hard thing to come to terms with.

• Academia takes advantage of passionate but naive individuals who think that they are getting free training in a subject they love without considering the emotional, mental and temporal cost of the path, not to mention the high risk of failure.

• The vast majority of academic research is a circle jerk. Academic research is often done in the name of curiosity and interest instead of actual value to society. Not only that, much of it isn't very good research. The standards for publishing scientific work have plummeted and has become more of a business (for both the publisher and the authors) than a noble pursuit of human advancement. Publishers want exposure and big bucks while PI's want impact factor, citations, and publication count.

Academia right now might be OK or even "good" for science, but it is bad for scientists and could be so much better.