Just survival bias, for every fighter like her there are 99 others that fell through the cracks. Not everyone is born with such a strong will to succeed.
It’s like people who say “how could America be racist if Obamacare got elected” which I have been hearing a lot lately. You can have a system that’s massively unfair... the existence of a handful of people who succeed despite unfairness is not evidence of anything except that some people are extraordinary.
It's the onus of FT to contextualize Ms. Fowler's comments, if that's what you're getting at, but then again, it is FT not People magazine (take it for what it's worth).
I homeschooled my sons. Lack of formal education prior to university is not evidence that one is not getting support. There are parents that actively quash the dreams of their kids and insist the kids pursue something the parent feels matters. They push their kids into pursuing a particular path. This is often seen by outsiders as a good thing, but it usually is not. It usually means the kid never got to decide for themselves what they wanted out of life and simply did as they were told.