I can think of various motivations:

• In academia, you keep receiving the same age group of students, which keeps your mentality younger.
• In academia, there is variety, which helps you fight routines in terms of working time, courses, students, and colleagues.
• In academia, the potential for evolving, changing, and improving is large.
• People in academia enjoy social respect.

I can think of various motivations:

• In academia, you keep receiving the same age group of students, which keeps your mentality younger.
• In academia, there is variety, which helps you fight routines in terms of working time, courses, students, and colleagues.
• In academia, the potential for evolving, changing, and improving is large.
• People in academia enjoy social respect.

I think it is stress and burn out syndrome. I've seen it in quite a few cases.

Two things led me to leave a large ICT multinational a few years ago. First is the desire to study and pursue an academic career as a master's, doctorate and postdoctoral degree, and the second is the lack of time to devote my family to overwork in the company. Although the salary is lower in the university, nothing pays the freedom to live with the family

Thank you so much Prof. Zouheir Maalej for sharing your opinion on what motivates people to quit successful/ lucrative careers for academia. I can truly see that you have extensive teaching experience in higher institution. Thank you once more.

Regards, MO.

Thank you so much Prof. Mirna Leko-Šimićo. I am really glad to know that stress could make people quit successful/ lucrative careers for academia. Do you mean physical stress? A good number lecturers/researchers/professors also experience academic stress. Stress is a major concern in many, if not all, educational institutions all over the world. Academic staff also experience stress as a result of multiple roles and responsibilities assigned to them within the universities.

Thank you so much Prof. Marcelo Tsuguio Okano for sharing your interesting experience. It is very important to spend quality time with family. Congratulations for taking the right step in the right direction.

Regards, MO.

Dear Modestus Okwu ,

I most cases not younger but older managers and consultants move to academia to find a "safe haven" and a possibility to share their experience for a long time (in many countries there is no age limit for university professors) at good price and with no pressure.

For younger people Mirna mentioned "stress". However, finding the escape in academia may have broader reasons than simply inability to work any longer with the present difficult bosses and stupid subordinates --- realizing the glass ceiling because of race, background, lack of family connections etc; understanding the raising risks of personal involvement into different illegal (unethical) business practices of the employer; unacceptable offers to be relocated in some strange places etc.

Frankly speaking, the full-time return to academia is seldom successful. The most successful cases I observed were sharing academic duties with business life in different roles.

bests,

Igor Gurkov

Thank you so much Prof Igor Gurkov for your laudable contribution. I quite appreciate your prompt response.

My pleasure.

My former Ph.D. student brilliantly defender his Ph.D. dissertation and almost immediately found a lucrative job in a representative office of a foreign oil company in the United Arab Emirates. He enjoyed luxury life there and also was happy to make three daughters, but after almost a decade he returned back asking an assistant professor position is his alma mater as he reached the glass ceiling in his company. Unfortunately, the assistant professor salary was insufficient to support his family, so he moved further for searches.

I make the answer laudable, but in the reality the size of the grey zone of corporate practices is rapidly expanding with anti-globalization movement (see enclosed a paper with a table of such grey-ing practices) and authorities in both home and especially host countries make various types of "performances" to discover and to stop grey corporate practices.

When the local tax authorities supported by security guys in full camouflage and with machine guns in hands rush into the office of your company to check accounts and take out papers, not only financial officers but many other employees think about alternative types of employment.

bests,

Igor Gurkov

Thank you so much Prof. for the detailed information and for sharing your student's experience. It is clear that often times a lot of factors could make people quit business or successful/ lucrative careers for academia and insufficient pay could be the major factor that make some professionals stay away from academics. Thank you for the attached document. I will go through it much later today.

Regards, MO.

Somehow I agree with Zouheir Maalej.

To me this is a context based decision, in Asian cultures "teachers" get more respect in society, so to me respect is the most important factor to join academia.

I do not know about others. Also never read about this topic but I joined academia and left corporate sector due following reason.

1- You own nothing in corporate sector when you will leave it [If you are in middle management or higher management, CEO can have shares]. Comparatively in academia your research papers/books will have your name till death.

2. Scope of your work: There is no boundary in academia. You can write whatever you want. you can reach to wider audience. But in corporate sector you cannot write. I removed one of my very popular blog on linked-in [About telecom companies performance , because my corporate affairs and HR department told me to remove that.]

3-As Muhammad Farrukh mentioned, yes respect is one factor

4- You can work as independent consultant, with many companies at the same time.

5- I wanted to be a writer [ Although, my writing is not good, there are many things i need to learn, & I am learning something every day] but I feel more fulfilled when someone says I read your work, it was good or you need to improve this thing

I worked in corporate sector for 7 years & at the end I cannot claim the revenues i earned for companies, I introduced many campaigns , products which are owned by companies.

Thank you very much Dr. Muhammad Farooq for sharing your experience on what inspired you to leave corporate sector for academia. Your reasons are great. Thank you once more.

Regards, MO.

From my point of view, most employees are not comfortable with what they do and the work guidelines and principles are so rigid that you have no space at all to update and upgrade yourself your field of endeavour. It quite refreshing to also note that employees working with conglomerate does not necessarily mean they are happy and therefore can't quit. Employees motivation and satisfaction sometimes becomes huge dilemma for corporate governance.

There can be many reasons for that.

Academic field is time bound. There is perfect in and out time. and no overtime.

Academic field is stress free.

It is also research oriented.

And obviously public holidays and vacation also plays important role.

I can talk about my own experience. I have not conducted research in the topic.

I am in a PhD program now. It is outside the field of my employment entirely. I have spent 20+ years in Silicon Valley through a number of startups and a large company. What has brought me back to academia is that the work gets old. When I worked a technical job, it got to the point where I wasn't really learning anything new, just how to use yet another piece of software.

You might think that coding might be a never ending challenge. It can be depending on what you write, but mostly what happens, at least in enterprise software, is that the product matures and you end up just coding user interfaces and reporting and management tools, which is not very interesting.

Then it was fun learning to sell, but it got old. Selling is also extremely stressful because you are on commission. It can also get you down because a salesperson mostly fields rejection. Then it was fun learning how to market products, but it got old. It was fun learning how to lead people, but then you get tired of applying the same models to the same problems over and over. There is the challenge of continuous improvement, in order to get this person to perform I have to get out of my own comfort zone, but it isn't new. Doing research, there is always opportunity to advance the frontier of knowledge. It is the intellectual stimulation that drew me to academia.

Dear Greg Olsen,

Thank you very much for sharing your interesting experience. I am glad to read from you, your feedback is extremely valuable.

Regards, MO.

This is because the academic field is the one that qualifies individuals to achieve this success in business. Thus the successful individual seeks to build successful individuals for business organizations. This means that the benefits will be greater for the business organizations, since a group of successful people will have greater returns than if they were limited to only one individual.

Dr.Ali Alshaher

comfort zone.There is burn out in MNCs culture and meeting higher and higher targets lieing and handling tough situation

to make it simple, we find it in "motivation". Money is not a sole motivator and more money does not necessary lead to the higher satisfaction. other factor like recognition and inner satisfaction of doing what you like, something you can have control of, pushes people to quit their nice jobs and go back to the academic life. Soon or late, the academic career also pays off. I would say it is not a desperate decision.

Best Regards,

Pierre

@Pierre Sindambiwe, Dr. Rajendra K. Gupta, Dr. Ali Alshaher, thank you all for your quick and helpful response and suggestions.

Sure the answer is not money. It has to do with passion to impact knowledge.

Passion

Money is the key driver. Thank you.