>>13483780My reasons:
1. Teaching load too high: despite promises of protected time, having to teach 3 courses a semester leaves very little time to concentrate on research, and you end up being a fancy teacher, which is not my primary goal.
2. Academic bureaucracy: having to deal with 4 secretaries, each one of them with major attitude/entitlement issues, every time I need to get a minor thing done, becomes a real pain in the ass.
3. Admin creep: The university administration tends to interfere with your business and research work, whether directly or indirectly, to the point that it became unreasonable at the institution I was with. Things such as the types of projects you can/cannot pursue, blocking students from joining your department, forcing curriculum changes, forcing group wide proposals etc.
4. Not a research job: The truth is, you end up doing very little research, between teaching, navigating the admin shit, supervising students, and spamming proposals/papers, there is very little time to do real research or technical work, which is what I like to do. Your primary job is to make the university money, whether you like it or not, and you should be sending out proposals all the time and networking with grant agents.
5. Grant agencies dictate you research indirectly: Since you need to get money for the research to run, if your work is currently not lined up with the interest of NSF or other research agencies, you have to scramble to find someone to fund you. I was able to get 4 research grants, all in areas which are not in my direct interest, and even though I could have just managed the students and the lab and moved on with my new direction, it did not sit right with me.
6. Compensation: I am sure you noticed that the compensation is not that great, it is actually very low. You will have undergraduate students graduating into entry level jobs earning much more than you. Whereas in industry, you are much more valued and can easily double you earnings.
