Academia and Acadaemia: The institution and the life inside it (#547)

The word Acadaemia is used intentionally, as the Commonwealth spelling seems to fit the story better.

There is only one correct spelling in the dictionary:

Academia.

It is a neat, institutional word. Balanced. Formal. Slightly impersonal.

It refers to universities as systems - budgets, rankings, promotion pathways, committees, dashboards, strategic plans.

It describes the machinery of higher education rather than the spirit that once animated it.

But lately I’ve found myself thinking about another word. One that doesn’t officially exist.

Acadaemia.

The extra ae is intentional.

It echoes the Commonwealth spellings I grew up with - anaemia, paediatrics, haematology.

For those trained in Australia or the UK, it feels oddly familiar. Softer. More human. Less like a bureaucracy and more like a place.

Because there is, in truth, a difference.

Academia is the structure

Academia is what universities become when viewed from above.

It is the language of:

Productivity metrics,

Impact scores,

Compliance structures,

Performance dashboards, and

Faculty lines calculated in spreadsheets rather than stories.

It speaks in the vocabulary of efficiency and growth.

It measures success by scale, visibility, and revenue.

In Academia, faculty are resources, programs are deliverables, and students are throughput.

None of this is inherently malicious. Institutions need structure to survive.

Universities are expensive enterprises, and accountability matters.

But structures, once built, tend to grow heavier with time. They accumulate rules the way old buildings accumulate dust.

Eventually, the structure begins to forget the reason it was built.

Acadaemia is the lived world

Acadaemia is what universities feel like from the inside.

It is the first mentor who took your curiosity seriously.

The professor who spent an extra hour explaining a concept because they cared whether you understood it.

The shared laughter in a clinic hallway after a difficult day.

The sense, once common, that universities were places where people were formed, not simply processed.

Acadaemia is quieter than Academia.

It doesn’t appear in annual reports.

It cannot be measured on dashboards.

But it is the reason most of us came in the first place.

Very few young scholars enter universities dreaming of compliance training or performance metrics.

They enter because someone inspired them.

Because a teacher changed the trajectory of their thinking.

Because knowledge felt like a living thing passed from one generation to the next.

That is Acadaemia.

The widening gap

The unease many faculty feel today is often described as financial pressure, administrative growth, or bureaucratic overload.

Those are real.

But beneath them lies something deeper.

Many of us trained in Acadaemia.

We now work in Academia.

The shift is subtle but powerful.

Where we once felt part of a scholarly community, we increasingly feel embedded in an organizational system.

Where curiosity once drove decisions, strategic alignment now does.

Where mentorship once defined academic identity, measurable output often does.

The institution has grown louder than the vocation.

This is not nostalgia. Every generation believes its past was purer.

Universities were never perfect. But they were once more clearly oriented toward the human relationships that made scholarship possible.

Today, the balance has tilted.

Why the distinction matters

Language shapes how we think.

When everything becomes Academia, the institution becomes the whole story. It becomes easy to assume that the system is the university. That spreadsheets, rankings, and policies are the natural center of academic life.

But if we allow room for Acadaemia, we remember something essential:

Universities are not buildings or budgets.

They are relationships sustained over time.

They are conversations between teachers and students.

They are moments when someone’s intellectual life quietly changes direction.

They are communities where knowledge is transmitted not just through publications, but through example.

When those elements weaken, no amount of institutional efficiency can replace them.

A small rebellion - or a small reminder

Perhaps the spelling change is only a private joke.

Perhaps it is a gentle rebellion against the institutional tone that dominates academic life.

Or perhaps it is simply a reminder.

Academia needs structure to function.

But Acadaemia is why it exists.

If universities lose the second while preserving only the first, they may remain large, visible, and well-funded. But they will slowly lose the thing that made them worth sustaining in the first place.

The challenge ahead is not to dismantle Academia.

It is to remember Acadaemia while we still can.

Final thoughts

Institutions endure only when they remember the people they were built to serve.

When the structure forgets the human purpose, reform is no longer optional. It becomes a responsibility.

In the end, universities survive not because of their systems, but because of the people who still believe in them.

If Academia is to endure, it must learn again how to protect Acadaemia.

The future of Academia depends on whether we still value Acadaemia.

#bunyipsbooksbeyond