What academics think of academics is different to what other people think

Academics have a more favourable perception of themselves than other people, according to Melih Sever, Seyhan Ozdemir (Suleyman Demirel U (in Turkey) and Kate Jobson (School of Oriental and African Studies (UK). They surveyed people from the two countries to explore “cross-cultural perspectives of academics via metaphors,” new in the journal Higher Education Research and Development.

One they liked is “an academic is like a bad dinner guest … ”

While they found cultural differences, there were common perceptions. Academics used “themes of guidance, versatility and inquiry,” “emergent ideas” from people without university backgrounds focused on academics as “egotistical, unreliable and removed from reality.”

As for students, “the recurrent themes were that of academics as information sources, navigators and inaccessible to them in both contexts.”

CMM would like to report more but the article is paywalled and we have already spent current budget on journal access.

Which raises a different question, “for-profit publishers are like …”