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I noticed this in fundamental physics research, which has been stripped bare of the best and brightest, as if a plague of locusts had gone through every univers

I noticed this in fundamental physics research, which has been stripped bare of the best and brightest, as if a plague of locusts had gone through every university. Pretty much everyone who does really well in physics ends up as a quant or something similar because the pay starts at 10x what you get as a researcher and goes up from there into the stratosphere. The only people left behind are those that didn't-quite-make-it, or truly deeply love physics and simply don't want to get an extra zero on their pay-cheque.

patrick451 4y ago
And yet tenure track jobs are still fiercely competitive. Maybe all the folks applying to those jobs are just the dregs who couldn't cut it as a quant, but I doubt it. Point being, that despite the fact that you can make more money in industry, universities still have an oversupply of people (both professors and grad students) who are willing to work for peanuts.