In academia it's even worse. There's a glass floor that's also a glass ceiling. There's one group of people making tons of money publishing worthless material. There's a second group doing all the work in the false hope that they'll someday get to join the first group. I was lucky enough to learn this lesson as an undergrad and didn't get tricked into going for a PhD.

By the way, the "research" about texting while driving you might have read about or heard discussed on NPR is just highly plausible bullshit.