If the secular press (both blue and red versions) is to be believed, all young adults have great problems of insecurity. Indeed, that seems to be an aspect of being a young adult. If someone goes to kollel and then decides they want to change career tracts (i.e. not become a Torah educator or other communal functionary), they need to expect to retrain – but that’s true of almost every young adult who wants to change career, and changing careers is something young adults do frequently. If fact, former kollel students are in some ways better off since someone who goes to a private university in the hope of a career in humanities will be deeply in debt from student loans, and just as employable in the “real world” as a kollel person, and without the option of working for the Jewish community (e.g. compare the prospects of a PhD in Classics to a kollel student leaving kollel).
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