Science pays significantly worse that almost anything else you can do with the same skillset. The only real money making pipeline in physics is to immediately g

Science pays significantly worse that almost anything else you can do with the same skillset. The only real money making pipeline in physics is to immediately go into finance after getting your PhD, for example. Everyone else who stays in research is taking a pay cut in exchange for doing work they are passionate about. On the one hand I think it's a good thing for science that the vast majority of people who only want to make money leave the field. The problem is the barrier to entry for people who really just want to do science. Most of this in the form of the cost of undergrad education, and PhD program sripends being too low to support a family.