MIT PHYSICS DEPARTMENT FACES UNPRECEDENTED FACULTY EXODUS.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has lost eleven tenured or tenure-track faculty members from its physics department in the past eighteen months, a rate of departure that faculty and administrators say is without precedent in the department's modern history.
The losses span nearly every subfield but have hit condensed matter and particle physics particularly hard, leaving graduate students scrambling to find new advisors.
Several described similar experiences, saying they received little notice and that departing faculty were unwilling or unable to discuss where they were going.
In at least two cases, students said their former advisors cited nondisclosure agreements and declined to say anything beyond confirming they had accepted positions outside academia.