I think the 'meat' in these sort of topics all comes down to trying our hardest to dismiss outliers, and seeing what can be "reasonably" expected. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, and a slew of others dropped out - and did okay. But of course that's a nonsensical argument for dropping out, because their outcomes were very atypical. Here too, high paying data science jobs is in no way a reasonable or normal career trajectory for somebody pursuing economics/environmental studies.