I am currently a physics student (in Germany) and have to tell you that people "throwing away their studies" is not something STEM-students are exempt from. In

I am currently a physics student (in Germany) and have to tell you that people "throwing away their studies" is not something STEM-students are exempt from. In fact most physics students (at least in Germany) will go on and do something totally unrelated very soon after graduating. We graduate a lot more people than what are actually used in science and physics related industries. Of course some fraction of the aquired skills may also be useful in other jobs, but that applies to a lot of studies in the humanities as well.