I should've given more context. Based on my anecdata in post-Soviet world, ~50% of graduates choose a job completely unrelated to their degree (e.g. a chemist b

I should've given more context. Based on my anecdata in post-Soviet world, ~50% of graduates choose a job completely unrelated to their degree (e.g. a chemist becomes web designer, a linguist becomes QA engineer, and economist becomes barista). They probably realize this during first 1-2 years in college, but they carry along because it's just easier this way, they made friends with classmates, and education is free or cheap. The point is, they don't care at all about the academic problems because it's (a) not interesting to them and (b) usually professors don't motivate students with real-life examples. E.g. while microeconomics is very much relevant for everyone, the way it was taught to us, it felt insanely boring and inapplicable to real problems.