You are mistaking, admission to Harvard with a "career in academia". Being admitted to a school has some correlation to your achievements (legacy students and affirmative action aside). Being one of the small percentage of graduate students that gets a paying job in the field has far more to do with your loyalty and your willingness to subjugate yourself to the will of your superiors - as the author of this piece (and anyone else who has come up through the ranks of post-grad education in the last 25 years) rightly points out.
How true is the no cap part? Genuinely curious, because I can't imagine some cults where if you're at the bottom of the ladder, the cult will do everything it takes to retain you if you give the cult little money and unrelenting loyalty because the loyalty itself will take care of retaining oneself to the cult. Hence, willingness to subjugate oneself to the will of the superiors with no end. Hopefully that makes sense.
