Oh scientists are leaving science in droves, certainly. Often becoming sales-people for deep-tech companies, which is rather sad.

This is the most recent shock, and probably the biggest one, but academia has been becoming toxically metrics-driven, authoritative and political for a long while, weirdly more than in industry.

It has nothing to do with scientists of course, they are the last ones that would want this. It's a never-ending squeeze from the top.

And also the fact that so many students were pushed to study pure sciences, which is great in principle, but some of these degrees only prepare you to stay in university as an academic, and there's only so much budget for that.