5. Academic success has been rewarded every step of the way.
I look at my high school classmates who I know went on to get Phds. (Sample size of 8) All of them were among the smartest few percent in the class. Every success that they got through the end of undergrad was due to academic performance. But afterwards things slowed down. Only 2 of 8 stayed through to tenure. The two smartest got Phds in math and wound up in non-faculty positions. One other got a science industry job. One wound up at a hedge fund. And two teach high school.
All things considered it's not a bad lot in life, but these were amongst the best and brightest of my peer group. Five of Seven would have been better served taking other paths to their end destinations.
There is a systemic incentives problem going on. Every individual school has an incentive to push as many people as possible into academia. This is for both cheap labor, and because their brand goes up when absolute #s of their grads go on to big things. The schools in aggregate also benefit when there are more Phd grads than job applicants. (Again keeps costs down) The systemic over-supply punishes the graduates as a whole.
It's a case where the individuals who have gotten the most mileage listening to their teachers, are also the ones who most need to stop listening to them. :-)