On the other hand, when you become an officer you'd have to be grossly ignorant not to know about the (US) military "up or out" policy. One complaint here that seems to be legit is that students are not told how poor their job prospects are in raw numbers. Now, some of that is no doubt to avoid discouragement, you don't know if X student will later shine, or burn out, but....

I got my degree in the early 90s. At that time, it was already common knowledge among grad students that we couldn't all be hired into academic jobs. How could we not have known? My dad, who got his PhD in the 50s told me it was well known even then.

That's an issue for academia in general. One gets the sense that during the boom times, the universities stopped caring about the job prospects of their graduates since they figured the degree would give them an advantage one way or another.