[morgante]

Fair point. The market is working properly.

The problem is mostly academics selling lies about that market to impressionable young students. They're supposed to be mentors looking out for their students' best interests, but are actually just pushing up the labor supply and pushing down prices.

forgotpwtomain's comment is highly indicative of the way academics do that. "Ignore the reality of terrible job options in academia. Industry is dirty and being a penniless researcher is the only noble path through life."

[forgotpwtomain]

I don't know about you but I'm quite grateful that people like Donald Knuth stayed in the apparently terrible place that academia is rather then becoming senior managers at IBM for 500k+ a year.

I don't think that not having a huge salary == lower quality of life, I think having a non-rewarding job does though.

> Industry is dirty and being a penniless researcher is the only noble path through life."

I never advocated this, while for some people in fact being penniless doesn't significantly impact quality of life; for a lot of talented people that want to have families it does in fact matter and it's a large loss for science if Academia cannot retain these people.

[morgante]

So am I. In fact, I wish more people were able to work on research. Treating a desire for a comfortable living as the problem rather than an objective to be fulfilled is what keeps us from getting more and better researchers.

Also keep in mind that his generation's options were much better. The academic job market was a lot friendlier back then.