Why are people still chosing Optometry?

The debt to income ratio is obscene ( school is so expensive, the cost of boards, the cost of boards prep vs the low income out of school). There has been recent discussions on how the NBEO scores have had such a high fail rate and there are even students who have taken the boards 6+ times and can no longer practice or take them again. Once you're out of school, patient care can be brutal when people think you are only good for renewing glasses and contact lens presciptions...even if you get residency trained- oftentimes those ODs end up working for Lenscrafters or Pearle. There are so many other careers with much higher earning potential with way less school than this one. Most of the new grads I've met don't even want to do direct patient care anymore...So I genuinely want to understand why people are chosing this as a career?