One of my best friends is an architect in Europe. After years of struggling in the field, they went to be an instructor.
I dunno, I feel like it's a pyramid scheme, and it makes me sad.
There is just not much demand for certain jobs while it is a dream of many many people. As an average software engineer you'll still easily make an above median salary somewhere. But from what I've seen, as an artist, if you are not in the top few percent, not in terms of skill but perseverance, networking and self-marketing, you'll starve.
Personally, I didn't study anything related but was in music semi-professionally (more on the production side) for about 5 years until I decided to just keep it as a hobby. In my case, I realized that in the end, I'm just not passionate enough about it to keep accepting the trade-offs. The ones that made it are. Deeply so, and they don't regret anything. Nobody wishes they had picked another career path.
And then you are 28, already in debt, having wasted a decade without a decent career to fall back on.
Also, people tend to expect positive outcomes for themselves. "It is going to be hard..." yeah, sure gramps. But I'm different.
* Anecdotally, I’ve never seen a group of students more willing to undermine each other than the architecture students where I took university. Because of the “accept many then weed the lowest XX%” approach it seemed like they were always trying to tear each other down. I’m sure it’s not like that everywhere, but I saw this firsthand at one school and heard secondhand for another.
Or demolish each other, you could say.
If you do UI, its essentially the abstraction of the architect profession.
Looking forward to an immersive vr web where I can start really building out digital built environments.