In addition to what Seth says, there’s the simple fact that academia doesn’t put meaningful organizational effort into preventing people from leaving! While some professors will personally try and guilt their grad students and postdocs to stay, the faculty don’t strategize together about how to set up high-pressure interventions. Retention is barely an afterthought, since there’s always a glut of candidates.
“Dysfunctional thing that leaves people feeling like failures” does not put something in the cult cluster.
In addition to what Seth says, there’s the simple fact that academia doesn’t put meaningful organizational effort into preventing people from leaving! While some professors will personally try and guilt their grad students and postdocs to stay, the faculty don’t strategize together about how to set up high-pressure interventions. Retention is barely an afterthought, since there’s always a glut of candidates.
“Dysfunctional thing that leaves people feeling like failures” does not put something in the cult cluster.