I'm presently about to finish my bachelor's degree in physics, having planned to continue on to a PhD and then pursue a job in academia. My high school teachers, and even my professors now, actively encourage me and my classmates to do this. Evidently, the latter are either unaware of the current ridiculously high (# of physics PhDs)-to-(# of jobs in academia for physics PhDs) ratio, or they're propagating it deviously to keep up the cheap labor available to tenured professors in the form of pitifully-paid post-docs. I'm going to steer clear of the professorship route because America isn't capable of supporting the current number of continuously produced doctorates, and those who do obtain a doctorate end up facing hesitation from employers in industry due to being "over-qualified."

Instead, though I grew up with fanciful pipe dreams of being a scientist, paid to inquire about the universe, yada yada yada, I'm going to go into a career that will actually guarantee a reasonable level of job security, probably in the financial sector.

My point is that all of this talk about how America isn't producing enough scientifically motivated students seems outweighed by the fact that there are newly minted physics PhDs discovering they can't stay in academia, and being hard-pressed to find good work in industry, end up at starting positions at companies where their CS-major buddies from back in college are now years ahead of you financially and socially... if they're lucky.

Considering the lack of academic prowess at Texas high schools, he's probably better off self-learning.