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About 5 years ago, Jake VanderPlas wrote an interesting and in my opinion, crucial, piece on why many academic cultures are unsustainable in the long run, and will eventually be outcompeted industry if not totally collapse due to excessive brain drain.

His key argument is that desirable academic skills are increasing indistinguishable from desirable industry skills, the difference is that industry pays more, and produces vastly more interesting results with higher impact. Thus raising the natural question: why stay in academia? For instance, why would any post-doc earn 40k when they can earn 200k using the same skillset working at IBM, Apple, Google, Uber, Ebay, Amazon, Yahoo, Etsy, Ali Baba....this list is endless.

This brain drain has been documented in recent articles such as:

  1. "Big tech firms' AI hiring frenzy leads to brain drain at UK universities High demand at companies such as Google could leave fewer talented scientists to teach next generation, academics fear"

  2. "'We can't compete': why universities are losing their best AI scientists A handful of companies are luring away top researchers, but academics say they are killing the geese that lay the golden eggs"

  3. "AI academic warns on brain drain to tech groups"

It seems the author's prediction has by and large came to fruition.

Key excerpt from the first article:

With virtually the entire world utilizing the tools of data-intensive discovery, the same skills academia now ignores and devalues are precisely the skills which are most valued and rewarded within industry.

The result of this perfect storm is that skilled researchers feel an insidious gradient out of research and into industry jobs. While software-focused jobs do exist within academia, they tend to be lower-paid positions without the prestige and opportunity for advancement found in the tenure track. Industry is highly attractive: it is addressing interesting and pressing problems; it offers good pay and benefits; it offers a path out of the migratory rat-wheel of temporary postdoctoral positions, and often even encourages research and publication in fundamental topics. Most importantly, perhaps, industry offers positions with a real possibility for prestige and career advancement. It's really a wonder that any of us stay in the academy at all.

Couple years ago I have read similar question being asked (perhaps precisely on this StackExchange), and at the time the common consensus was one of denial. A few prominent professors predicted that no such brain drain would occur due to historical tendencies they have seen in the students, in other words, a non-issue. But now it seems that the brain drain cannot be stopped, a quick survey of my fellow graduate students quickly revealed that none of them wanted to remain in academia after graduation.

Out of this denial and leadership vacuum in academia, a very insidious academic culture has developed: students would start a PhD degree just to take enough industry-oriented courses and then quickly leave for industry. I have personally witnessed this in many fellow graduate students.

So, once again, is there anyway for academia to stop or halt the one way brain flowing from academia to industry? What can academic culture change in order to attract bright and talent students to carry on with fundamental research?

Coco Jambo
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    So, is it better to have intelligent people actually working in industry to solve real problems or keep them in academia to just discuss issues they think up? In reality we need intelligence in BOTH places... – Solar Mike Feb 08 '18 at 08:20
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    Yeah, the doom 'n gloom stuff here's a bit confusing. That intelligent, well-educated people are finding commercial success outside of having to beg for money through grants seems like an entirely happy circumstance. Why should anyone even want for research and education to be bound up in the limited space of ivory towers? – Nat Feb 08 '18 at 08:23
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    I'm not sure what kind of answer you are looking for. One answer is already implicit: Pay more for academics. – Michael Greinecker Feb 08 '18 at 08:25
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    Yeah, what can we do to stop this brain drain, I mean, academia isn't competitive enough nowadays! Why don't bright people just become tenured professors like in the old days! The culprit must be industry... – Evariste Feb 08 '18 at 09:04
  • Closely related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/86862/1033 – gerrit Feb 08 '18 at 09:24
  • Although I think this question is interesting and important, I fear that it is, unfortunately, too broad. – gerrit Feb 08 '18 at 09:27
  • "Academia" is not going to collapse. Pay scales for certain departments may have to change. Then, of course, you will always have people for whom the salary is not their prime consideration. Lets face it, different people want different lifestyles and have different quality-of-life priorities. – Jon Custer Feb 08 '18 at 15:16
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    Looking at the links, this seems to be very specific to AI, not academia in general. It isn't something I've observed. – Rosemary7391 Feb 08 '18 at 15:41
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    @MichaelGreinecker That answer is the first thing that comes to mind, but how? and to whom? Money in unis is already hard to come by, and this brain drain is very field specific. If the answer is paying an AI researcher 150K USD or 70K£ in UK (random numbers), what should we pay to a social anthropologist? Not everyone can find a job outside unis with that salary. Should we introduce that pay gap in fields within the same uni? – Ander Biguri Feb 08 '18 at 16:47
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    @AnderBiguri: That pay gap already exists, in many places (e.g. the US). Faculty at comparable ranks in different fields get vastly different salaries, and this does depend in large part on industry demand for people in that field. – Nate Eldredge Feb 08 '18 at 19:19
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    This concerns a tiny fraction of academia. In many places on Earth and for many fields a cosy government job is the jackpot. – Cape Code Feb 08 '18 at 20:33
  • @NateEldredge is it e.g. US or only US? AFAIK, most countries in europe do not do this. – Ander Biguri Feb 08 '18 at 21:02
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    @AnderBiguri: Good question, I don't know. – Nate Eldredge Feb 08 '18 at 21:10
  • "industry (...) produces vastly more interesting results with higher impact" - I disagree with this claim (that, by the way, I think is at best implied in the linked article). – O. R. Mapper Feb 08 '18 at 21:14
  • @Rosemary7391 I am in the department of chemistry. My engineering group has shifted from doing control of chemical plant to machine learning. All my fellow graduate students are chemical engineers, and many of them positioned themselves to working for software companies or companies that are doing AI or machine learning. This is to say, "AI" or data analysis in general, doesn't simply concern AI research, but it drains from every STEM department imaginable. Read the articles, the researchers are literally saying people who do not appreciate this is like an ostrich putting its head in the sand. – Coco Jambo Feb 09 '18 at 10:08
  • @Rosemary7391 In addition, every single sector of the industry are attempting to utilize AI/Machine Learning technologies. An oil and gas company would hire data analysis's just as a media company would. This is to say, there is a lot of mobility in this area. I know people who have done completely unrelated areas of research jumping onto this big data bandwagon, read some of the questions on stackexchange and you will see this trend. e.g. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/75482/advice-for-a-math-phd-student-who-is-also-interested-in-a-part-of-ee-cs – Coco Jambo Feb 09 '18 at 10:15
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    It's a good thing when a field has a healthy private sector that attracts graduates! It means research in that field can be financially self-sustained. I don't think a contraction of the academic workforce (if that ever happens) for these reasons is a cause for concern. – Cape Code Feb 09 '18 at 14:28
  • @RoyAyers your first two links talk about AI and computer science exclusively; your third is behind a paywall. I'm doing my PhD in a STEM department that isn't doing AI and I'm getting out afterwards because it's too competitive! Exactly the opposite problem... One professor has 6/7 PhD students and a couple of postdocs at a time. They can't possibly all remain in academia. Certainly I'm not seeing people leave before they finish their PhDs. – Rosemary7391 Feb 09 '18 at 19:27
  • I think the OP should modify the question to specify the brain drain is from STEM PhD go to TECH firms. If he does so, I hope the question will be reopened, as this is the elephant in the room in most Computer Science/Physics/Math/Bioengineering departments. – famargar Feb 15 '18 at 13:54
  • @famargar No worries, someone else will just ask this couple more years down the road, after all the academic positions are filled up, people are fed up to their ears with pseudo-applied research, and big tech firms have completely taken over our lives. Until then, we will continue to stick our heads down in the sand. – Coco Jambo Mar 04 '18 at 07:18

2 Answers2

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You mentioned one answer (pay). There're others. I once communicated with someone who left his position as a professor at a major North American university. That surprised me since I knew the job was in high demand. I asked him why, and he responded:

Professor positions in major research university in US require generation of research funds - a process of writing your best ideas and sending them to funding agencies. The process of getting money from funding agencies is worse than the lottery. You spent a lot of creative effort in putting a proposal together and then most of the time it gets thrown into a garbage can. It is a general state of affairs, not just my experience. I just decided that I've had enough of that. When I spend time creating something I want it to see the light of day. So I switched fields and now work in a very dynamic industry, generating new knowledge or writing products that are actually used.

If any postdoc ask me for advice now - whether or not to go into academia - I would answer why would you torture yourself? There are so many fun jobs and are even better paying.

There's more. If a fresh PhD graduate stays in academia:

  1. You live a nomadic lifestyle, hopping from one postdoc to another. This is not only bad for any significant others and children, but also a great hassle. Each time one moves, one needs new visas, needs to find accommodation, and so on. To add to that, postdocs offer no job security, and one is virtually always looking for a new job.
  2. After that, if you're smart / lucky enough to get a permanent position, you have to generate research funds, which is unreliable (above).
  3. After that, there's no guarantee you'll actually get tenure. If you are denied tenure, what are you going to do next? One is probably already >40 years old at that point.

Taken together, only the extremely passionate (or extremely masochistic) choose an academic career. For further reading I suggest these two articles which strongly shaped my view on this: Women in Science by Philip Greenspun, and Don't Become a Scientist! by Jonathan Katz.

Having said the above - why would a brain drain from academia to industry be a bad thing. It's simply market forces of supply and demand at play. If more people took the option to shift, there would be less competition for permanent positions. Less competition makes the academic path more attractive. Eventually things balance out. It's further possible for society to reverse the brain drain whenever it wishes, simply by providing more funding. If society doesn't want to do that, I don't see why academics should try to force it.

Allure
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  • "why would a brain drain from academia to industry be a bad thing. (...) Eventually things balance out." - if the primary goal is to achieve an optimal integration into the general job market without changing anything, just waiting till things balance out may be fine. If the goal is to ensure the academic environment is equipped optimally for producing good research results, the same cannot necessarily be said. – O. R. Mapper Feb 08 '18 at 21:39
  • "If society doesn't want to do that, I don't see why academics should try to force it." - I am not convinced that level of intentional and directed decision-making can be ascribed to "society". Very often, things just happen to evolve into a certain direction without anyone specifically targetting that outcome. In fact, I would argue that the only way to specifically target any particular outcome is often for interested parts of "society" to try and fight for that development. – O. R. Mapper Feb 08 '18 at 21:56
  • Thank you for your answer, I agree with many points, but to your question "why would a brain drain from academia to industry be a bad thing" - how about professors literally cannot sustain their research group when all the students are fleeing towards industry and no students are coming in? This is glaring in some departments that traditionally performed theoretical work, which are increasingly under/de-valued. These departments are increasingly unable to retain or attract students, and hence attract funding, and no new hiring has taken place for many many years. – Coco Jambo Feb 09 '18 at 10:20
  • @RoyAyers well if the students are fleeing towards industry, it's a sign that they're in high demand right? There should be people willing to study if it enables a high-demand job. If there's a discipline which cannot attract students at all, I'd interpret that as a sign that the discipline is not useful. – Allure Feb 09 '18 at 20:37
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    @O.R.Mapper I agree, but I think the way to proceed is to make the job more attractive, not to figure out how to keep good people in not-so-good jobs. – Allure Feb 09 '18 at 20:38
  • @Allure High-demand, but not in their field! For example, I am from the department of Chemistry, we do power plant control. Nobody from my research group wants to do anything even remotely related to Chemistry afterwards. They are in high-demand based on their software/programming skills, and none of their chemistry skills which is what their graduate program has trained them for. This line of research is useful, however, it is not as exciting or as high-paying as software jobs, or modeling jobs in industry. Our research group will run dry of students unless major change happens. – Coco Jambo Mar 04 '18 at 07:23
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I wish your assumption was correct!

The typical cases you mentioned cannot be extended to academia as a whole. It is true that industry can pay higher salaries, but still, faculty jobs are competitive as hell.

On the other hand, in many countries (e.g., in Europe), the number of students is strongly declining. This means that even the current faculty will be out of the job soon. This is the reason for high pressure on faculty members for doing various tasks including attracting funds. Many universities rely on international students to survive.

With all the problems and pressure on academics, faculty positions are still among the most competitive jobs. Still, headhunting is a common practice in the industry for attracting talented people. If there was such a one-way migration, headhunters would not need to persuade academics with attractive job offers.

In my practice, for any faculty position, there are at least 10 qualified candidates, but one will get the job. Some try again somewhere else, and some get frustrated with the competition and give up to get a job in the industry. This is how the migration occurs in general.

Googlebot
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    Could you provide a source for declining numbers of students in Europe? – Michael Greinecker Feb 09 '18 at 07:42
  • @MichaelGreinecker just make a quick search https://www.ucas.com/corporate/news-and-key-documents/news/applicants-uk-higher-education-down-5-uk-students-and-7-eu-students and the US https://bryanalexander.org/trends/higher-education-enrollment-declined-in-2017-again/ – Googlebot Feb 09 '18 at 10:54
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    The first link only addresses demand of EU citizens for tertiary education in the UK- in the process of brexiting. The second link has even less to do with Europe. – Michael Greinecker Feb 09 '18 at 10:57
  • @MichaelGreinecker Poland:https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/06/universities-poland-struggle-shrinking-enrollments Sweden: https://www.thelocal.se/20101124/30406 It doesn't need a reference. The Europe population is in decline. The number of local students decreases. This is the reason that all European and North American universities have massive programs for attracting international students. – Googlebot Feb 09 '18 at 16:34