Traditionally, universities have paid less, but competed by offering an excellent environment, working conditions, tenure, etc.<p>More recently, the working environments of most universities have become much much worse; even exploitative. Tenure is much harder to get, more and more classes are taught by part time adjuncts, the administration bureaucracy becomes ever larger and more powerful. Horror stories are everywhere: The frantic scramble for jobs, the poverty wages, the professors sleeping in their cars or turning to prostitution to make ends meet, the politicised witch hunts, the grinding bureaucracy.<p>In Pantic's story, their student was probably hired way for a salary in the $125k-$250k range. Yes, that's high, yes it's more than a university is probably able or willing to offer. But a lot of people are not motivated only (or even primarily) by money. If you pick a top phd candidate, and make it clear to him that there is a real, viable path towards him obtaining tenure, making maybe $60-80k, having a well equipped lab, and having grad students of his own, and that he'll be a respected, high status individual in the campus hierarchy...many, many people would take that deal in a heartbeat. And that is something which <i>was</i> on offer 40 years ago, and is <i>not</i> an offer now, but could be. (Universities are still well funded; what's changed is the priorities.)<p>There's no shortage of people who want to be academics; the problem is that the deal being offered to them today is <i>terrible</i>; it's no surprise that the few who have compelling options outside academia are tempted. Boiling it down to being all about money is tempting, but I think it missed the point. If the Guardian had bothered to track the student in the story down, I suspect money would be a part of it, but only a part. And maybe not the largest part either.