Yes. I would say that the population was made up of people who wanted to do politics, the ones that wanted to do research without interfering with anyone, and t

Yes. I would say that the population was made up of people who wanted to do politics, the ones that wanted to do research without interfering with anyone, and the ones who left for industry because they wanted to at least be well paid and not look at each euro back and forth. I would say that the second population was good to brilliant, but somehow unfit for the real world (that was theoretical physics, mostly). The latter was usually quite good, and especially aware of their capacities. The first one was a disgrace to science. I had exchanges at levels I am ashamed of (a professor told me once that my field (modelization, that was in the early days of neural networks) has nothing to do with science and is for wimps. To what I told him that it indeed requires a minimal amount of intelligence, so some just do not get it). "Quelle ambiance, quelle ambiance" as we say in France - we had a few more of these exchanges, between the God Of The Dept and the slimy PhD subhuman that I was :) In retrospective, that was a good training.