What field are you in, though? I believe that attitude is tremendously pervasive the more "theoretical" the field is, e.g. the closer it is to math & physics, and the further it is from engineering.
Well, it's kind of funny. My degree is chemical engineering, my advisor is materials science, yet all of my work is HPC/computational. A lot of this stuff has become very interdisciplinary (I studied more computer science papers than anything over the last year).
I studied chemical engineering: all of our PhD grads chose industry over academia, and most of our young professors had come out of physics, chemistry, and biology departments. It was an interesting culture mix, partly created by the fact that ChemE is either disappearing as a field or changing to the point of being unrecognizable (depending on who you ask).
Yeah, the field has changed a ton. When my dad was working on his ChemE degree, they had a class strictly on galvanization (which was barely covered at all in my undergrad), and they were doing McCabe-Thiele diagrams by hand.
I can confirm that this idea is pervasive in physics (both experimental and theoretical)
The attitude of going into industry is more prevalent in physics? Or did I get that backward?
Sorry I wasn't clear - the attitude of going into industry being seen as a failure is common, especially among older professors. This attitude is changing somewhat, but is still definitely there.