ABSTRACT
Myths and stereotypes die hard. So it is with academia-a world that seems so populated by stereotypes and myths as if to be literally unreal. The images are easy to conjure up: pipe-smoking, absentminded, tweedy professors giving rambling lectures that echo within ivy-covered buildings secluded from the rest of the world. For much of the public, the university is disembodied, abstract thought divorced from the lives of normal people trying to make a living. The “community of scholars” is insular, protected, safe from all else. The walls around it are both literal and metaphorical. University leadersseemingly stuck in the genteel values of the past-look down upon the world of mammon and disdain efficiency in favor of older, classical values. Students pursue questions soon forgotten as they assume the responsibilities and demands of jobs in what so many call the “real world.”
