It's a scam!

I had a recent email exchange with an old colleague from graduate school. I was venting, in my email, how illusive the outlook of getting a full-time academic job is and that the whole thing is a scam.   As far as I know, only 1 out of the 7 of us who started our 1st year graduate work together got a permanent full-time teaching position.  Here's an excerpt of his reply:

"...I had part-time choral singing and part-time teaching in Canada until the spring of 2007, but I basically lost both of those things to do the UCLA gig for the 2007-08 academic year. I can really only make a maximum of about $450-500 (US) per month writing reference articles, so I’m now considering declaring Canadian bankruptcy, because I’m so badly in debt. Unfortunately, though, I can’t do anything about my US debt while I’m living in Canada.

It’s been a very tough last seven months: at least you have the piano teaching! I lived in three different places from July to late-October (house-sitting at two different places for a total of seven weeks and in my parents’ small, camper-trailer “cottage” for another eight weeks), and since late-Oct. I’ve been living in a very cheap (and very crappy) basement apartment that I will probably only be able to keep until the spring or summer.

Of course the academic world is a scam (only about a quarter of humanities Ph.D.s ever get full-time academic jobs), but I nonetheless believe in my work and my accomplishments, and I still hope that somebody who can give me a job will also eventually believe in me!"