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I get the feeling you've never really talked to many academics.


Especially not mathematicians! No one goes into math academia for the money, and people with math Ph.D.'s are often very employable at much higher salaries if they jump ship to industry. The reason mathematicians stay in the field --- and I say this as someone who didn't stay, for a variety of reasons --- is because they love math and want to spend their time researching and teaching it.


I work with the ones that made the jump to industry, so no, I'm confronted with the divide day in and day out. The academics that either switch to industry or maintain close industry ties, typically do not seem to share these concerns, or at least, can contextualize them.


Academics that decided they didn't really want to be academics, but instead switched to industry. Seems like a significant sample bias, no?


They're still academics...




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