b. Humanities PhD programs also have enormous dropout rates. And many dropouts also end up in bad shape. I'm ignoring them too, so in the context of the breathtakingly unscientific anecdote, it's even.
c. Besides which, survivorship bias is probably not even in the top three things that make my personal anecdote not a valid scientific experiment. It's obviously not good empirical evidence for many other reasons.
Look, the basic point is, fields that people "love" but which are very hard to get jobs in, such as academia, the arts, architecture, nonprofit human services work, journalism, modeling, video game design, etc. do not tend to actually make them happy in my personal observation and experience. Another point is that I think people in high-demand fields tend to have more life satisfaction.
Things I did not address: getting a degree vs. getting a job/career; are the humanities terrible?; which specific high-demand career should one choose?; what happens if one can't hack chem e/nursing school?
I don't know the answers to most of those questions. Failing out of nursing school? I really don't know what to tell you. Would it have been better if you passed as a fine arts major? Possibly. But I'm more concerned about careers than about degrees here. If you graduate with a fine arts degree and go into banking you may be better off than the nursing school dropout, if you try to seriously pursue a career as a sculptor you are probably going to be worse off, unless you have family money.
I really am not offering advice on what career to choose, besides pointing to one big superclass of jobs that are probably a bad idea to pursue and another big superclass that are probably a better idea.
Sorry this got stuck on chem e. I don't know any chiropractors, otherwise I would have used them.