Academia is a collective term for the scientific and cultural community engaged in higher education and peer-reviewed research, taken as a whole. The word comes from the akademeia just outside ancient Athens, where the Gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning. The sacred space had formerly been an olive grove, hence the expression "the groves of Academe". By extension Academia has come to connote the cultural accumulation of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations and its practitioners and transmitters. In the 17th century, English and French religious scholars popularized the term to describe certain types of institutions of higher learning. The English adopted the form academy while the French adopted the forms acadème and académie.

An academic is a person who works as a researcher (and usually teacher) at a university or similar institution in post-secondary (or tertiary) education. He or she is nearly always an advanced degree holder who does peer-reviewed research. In the United States, the term academic is approximately synonymous with that of the job title professor. In the United Kingdom, various titles are used, typically fellow, lecturer, reader and professor (see also academic rank), though the loose term don is often popularly substituted. The term "scholar" is sometimes used with equivalent meaning to that of "academic" and describes in general those who attain mastery in research discipline. It has wider application in its being also used to describe those whose occupation was scientific or pseudo-scientific research prior to mass organised higher education.

Academic administrators are not typically included in this use of the term academic.

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French Academic - Twitter Search

@LuceKD Firstborn has just elected to go joint honours French-Art Hist, which means she'll spend next academic year in the LOUVRE ! Stunning
AndreaGillies (Andrea Gillies) Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:20:05 -0000
@LuceKD Firstborn has just elected to go joint honours French-Art Hist, which means she'll spend next academic year in the LOUVRE ! Stunning
picked up a little book called the elegance of the hedgehog. this is a wordy french existential academic extravaganza and i may just read it
PeteLovering (Pete Lovering) Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:54:27 -0000
picked up a little book called the elegance of the hedgehog. this is a wordy french existential academic extravaganza and i may just read it
it looks like I just joined french club. good thing my university academic profile doesn't just read "student. or student writer."
gingerfridae (Grace A. Funcion) Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:42:37 -0000
it looks like I just joined french club. good thing my university academic profile doesn't just read "student. or student writer."
Oh. My. God. It's done. 20 pages of pure French literary analysis. Greatest academic achievement. Ever.
k8black (Kate Black) Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:55:04 -0000
Oh. My. God. It's done. 20 pages of pure French literary analysis. Greatest academic achievement. Ever.
Listening to French Lounge while going over my studies. I feel a faint flicker of hope for the dying academic inside of me.
TristanMagreet (Tristan) Sun, 13 Dec 2009 09:47:35 -0000
Listening to French Lounge while going over my studies. I feel a faint flicker of hope for the dying academic inside of me.
#ITTNews : IRAN: French academic in court - University World News http://bit.ly/7UYSWJ
infotectravel1 (infotectravel1) Sun, 13 Dec 2009 09:13:08 -0000
#ITTNews : IRAN: French academic in court - University World News http://bit.ly/7UYSWJ

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