> The problem is that those people went through their schooling being told that they were awesome and should be a professor (by people who successfully became tenured professors, and who didn't experience failure).

IMO it's still on them if they didn't do the research on what their outcome might look like. I absolutely loved physics in high school and chose to study computer science because I knew it would pay my bills. 8 years later I am not regretting my decision at all.