Leaving academia is a long, emotional process but I’m glad I did it

Not all academics can leave academia. It is very difficult to continue to be an independent scholar if your research involves basic science and need for laboratory facilities. The solution is not to flee and allow the disintegration of academic rigour to continue but to tackle it head on and reclaim academic institutions for academics. This will mean standing up to the mediocrity that has crept in over the years.

It sounds a little like leaving the Armed Forces, but also like changing professions at the same time.

Phew - what tosh! Let me know when academics are so desperate to escape the alleged ‘panopticon’ horrors of modern wickedly neoliberal academic life by taking up truly exhausting and underpaid jobs as airport baggage handlers or in Amazon distribution sheds, or are retraining as much-needed nurses or HGV drivers - then I might be able to summon up some sympathy for the donnish proles!

Not to mention the baying online mobs of militants, on hair-trigger alert for anything that could start a career-ending heretic hunt.................

Its mawkishness aside, the article is right that university life has deteriorated over the past twenty years, and not just for professors, but students, as well. And the article points to a main source of the deterioration: administrative oversight and control. Universities are now much more rule-bound than they were, from what professors must include in their syllabi to the safe-and-respectful campus policies that restrict freedom of expression and encourage people to file complaints. Administrative bloat is bad enough, but when it consists of offices and officers overseeing equity, diversity and inclusion, it's oppressive. It won't get better, either. As the professors who enjoy academic anarchy and academic freedom, and who enjoy study for the sake of study, leave or retire, they're replaced by professors who clamour for even more rules and structures and who teach for the sake of shaping students into the correct attitudes and values.

'Moving to Tuscany' does not sound too hard - except you will consistently bump into professors from LSE [in particular] and other universities visiting their holiday villas. The best resistance to academic neoliberalism is to keep in the system but ignore its metrics and the management. This is what I have done. Be a good citizen, prioritise students and casual employees, write what you like, and ignore 'grant capture' if you don't need those.

Brilliant. Inspires me to find myself again. I got sucked into something disgusting in wanting to be an academic. And yes I believe getting out of that cult body, heart, mind, soul won't be a piece of cake. A brave article indeed.