I suppose the question is, what should we be doing now or in the near future?
ETA:
There are many of my college friends who decided on a career very early and discovered they liked the idea better than the actual job. They felt stuck as they did not know which skills were transferable to other job markets. Nor did they really know what other jobs could be options. My interpretation of the OP was ideas on how to prevent THIS particular scenario.
Kind of. The specific scenario I fear, is one many of us have seen namely a person that sees themselves as being on a clear trajectory to academia, but one way or another they don't make it. They end up underemployed in various ways, or outright unemployed. They may struggle finding alternatives, and may realize in hindsight they wish they could rewind the clock and do things differently.
It's also debabtable whether academia is that great a career anyway.
