[brofallon]

Many folks, especially those in academia, really seem to value academic positions, but I'm not really sure where that comes from. Teaching isn't often the greatest part (though I recognize that not every professor has to teach, much), the success of much of your work is at the whimsy of a small handful of reviewers who typically aren't held accountable for the quality of their reviews, and the schedule can be very demanding pre-tenure, at least. Of course, many annoyances also exist outside academia, I'm just saying that academic jobs are no panacea, and I'm not sure why so many people value them so highly

I have a PhD but ended up working in "The Industry" and it's been awesome - good salary, interesting problems, smart co-workers, real-world impact.

[lambdatronics]

It comes from the ideal -- the freedom to work on big ideas/problems, with an approach of your choosing. There are a lot of parallels between running a lab as a professor and launching a start-up. The whole grant & publishing review process has really gotten ridiculous -- but incoming grad students aren't informed about this, generally.