Professors Leaving Academia: Why They Quit and Where They Go 

Quit after 15 years of tenure a year ago....actively toxic work environment..feel so much better! Thanks so much for this, greatly appreciate you!

I am as a faculty in engineering field can say: the opportunity cost for not going to industry is costing me double my annual income/year.

Faculty dissatisfaction and the degradation of quality in higher education are related to the same root problem: the unchecked growth of administrative power.

Excellent video. Thanks

I love working in academic. However, it frustrates me to have. to do all this administrative and pastoral care when I have no experience doing it and no training available. and I have to do it and many times I'm unaware that I'm doing it incorrectly or not meeting the needs of the students. The university, who has not trained me, will penalize me for a complaint about something that I wasn't trained for. So academic stuff are peeved. newbie professors leave the system because of its failure to provide a nurturing and supportive environment. So, before you can do the things, they need you to do to make their students who are paying them comfortable. You must be prepped. Lawyers prep for their cases professors do not. We are just thrown into the deep mire.

The most useful information on leaving academia I have seen. Thank you so much.

You both covered all the points. Good tip to leave anytime. I usually think I will start to apply and look for other types of jobs when I finish the semester etc. Industry is not going to wait for semester's end.

Toxic environment in academia is bad for mental health. Some colleagues are hard to work with.

I know how to fix some of the peoblems. How do I land an nterview as a academic advisor? Ive sent my app everywhere for two years now with a qualifying masters.

“Why are some reasons?”…8 think you mean “what are some reasons?”

You don’t mention one of the most important issues. You have to bring money (grants 🤮) that is much higher than your income. Might as well fund your own business with all that effort!

They call it “dark academia” for a reason.

It is useful to segment "professors" by academic discipline. The grievance faculties will never-ever get a job in the real world.... ever. Hard science and engineering Profs will be just fine.

Which "genocide" are you referring to -- which side of the Hamas-Israel war, if that is how you'd frame it? I left the humanities after several years of tending in that direction after job instability (i.e. in a huge college, my department was often teetering on the edge of austerity, which meant reduction in sections and instructors), and I went from being an instructor whose sections filled quickly to one who had to scramble to meet minimum enrollment thresholds. But the politics and unethical management styles (justified by politics--gender agendas, etc.) proved toxic in an ends-justify-means way that was appalling: woke students insisting on viewing history and all current events through their victimizer-victim prism regardless; colleagues wanting to "decolonize" the curriculum while calling Jews "white"; former department chairs -- both women -- mocking or even stopping my class during an evaluation rather than wait to discuss the issue afterwards, as per protocol; "anonymous" faculty surveys that weren't (all the better to root out the dissenter who sullies the otherwise glowing departmental lock-step position on a campus policy); trans students demanding special pronouns in English classes shared by second language students from traditional backgrounds who wanted to learn conventional English; rampant cheating thanks to translation programs and cut-and-paste internet information--nothing new there but Chat-GPT; and trans "women" having access to women's toilets while female faculty "bullies" couldn't defecate or micturate before that two-hour seminar, because a guy with a three-day beard and rouge on HIS cheeks was peaking over the stall door; and a female colleague cancelling committee work I'd done after she'd stood before the committee and solicited the help. After leaving once or twice in the past, I finally retired from all that. And it's their loss. (But it's mine, too, when I think of the classes I could be designing and teaching, lives I could be helping to shape, etc.)

It's no secret. Academia is full of egomaniacal people.

And we need to be judged by rubbish students and reviewers as well. This sucks.