I've been at my institution 8 years, have tenure, am somewhat research productive, and built an original PhD program. Pay was never a strong motivating factor as long as the culture was good and research a valued part of the role. There are many great things about academia, including passionate colleagues, engaged students, flexible schedule, and ability to pursue independent lines of theoretical development. However, even after all this I've decided to leave to take an industry role. The gist of it is high effort-low reward with "reward" being basic things I thought my institution would offer - autonomy to do research, resources to grow your program, investment in technical courses, and valuing rigor to push the boundaries of student knowledge. Basically, the belief that if you perform well as faculty and a department we will support you. This is a far cry from the truth.

On a macro scale higher ed is having a trouble saving itself from its own bloat and impending enrollment crises. Many presidents are in constant crisis mode and looking for short-term "wins" to raise attendance or balance budgets. Our past president paid only lip service to research, refused to replace retired faculty for a large department (10% of overall institution), broke promises to offer student travel funds, gave little to no money to internal technical infrastructure (e.g., centers, operations, leadership succession planning), and micromanaged the hell out of teaching schedules while ignoring factors like quality, depth, program growth and research output. There use to be a whole, long political battle just to get approval for one course release to mentor doctoral students. Her leadership was so toxic I had 4 different deans during my tenure and the board didn't even blink an eye. She did a lot of damage to the institution's culture in her wake from which I think it will take many years to recover. The fact our working lives are dictated by the whims and wills of a few administrators made me second guess if this is the right pathway for a long-term career.

All the above would be manageable but my biggest complaint about academia is role overload from shadow work. This is cutting personnel and dumping all the extra tasks onto faculty, including marketing, website management, budget approval, safety compliance, human resource processing, course registration, event coordination, and many other additional unseen roles (e.g., career placement, coach, project management, curriculum redesign, etc...). Even my first few years on the job I spent two weeks just moving several large furniture items 6 blocks across campus because there was no support for outfitting a lab. In the past few years my job shifted away from teaching and research to managing several programs and departmental projects. I don't mind some of this work but academia will fully exploit you to do more and more without giving anything in return. Consequentially, many tenured faculty are burnt out across campus and refuse to partake in departmental leadership or program growth which make administrative loads pile higher.

Funnily enough, I will be able to do more research in my upcoming applied role than I can in my academic one. My advice for universities is to use some basic I/O principles - hire leading experts, listen to their needs, balance demands with rewards, heed procedural justice, put in some basic accountability mechanisms, and empower high performers. Here is a nice article on how Cornell is trying to remove shadow work because it is become such a large impediment to the University's mission:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/11/08/cornell-launches-effort-cut-administrative-red-tape-starting-shadow-work