The market is intimidating but brutally honest, so many are afraid to enter finding all kinds of excuses crutches or rabbit holes to hide down instead of facing potential rejection, because of this they never learn how to recover from failure. You could argue from an outside perspective this is the purpose of modern academia for individuals*, it is a supplier of apparent safety, convenient rabbit holes, eventually trapping those who cannot face market forces or forget to come up for air. institutionalized inaction. *(Collectively the purpose of modern academia is to tell the state what it wants to hear.)