Academic elitism is a charge sometimes levied at academic institutions and academics more broadly, arguing that academia or academics are prone to undeserved and/or pernicious elitism; the term "ivory tower" often carries with it an implicit critique of academic elitism. Criticism of perceived academic elitism may or may not target intellectuals in general, academic institutions or education itself, but always targets present leadership, practices and/or policies in academia.
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Anti-intellectuals often perceive themselves as champions of ordinary people and as defenders of populism against elitism, especially academic elitism -- e.g., some of economist Thomas Sowell's writings (Intellectuals and Society) suggest that while academics and intellectuals have done much valuable work, they also have an undeserved "halo effect" and face fewer disincentives than other professions against speaking outside their expertise. These critics argue that highly educated people form an isolated social group whose views tend to be overrepresented amongst journalists, professors, and other members of the intelligentsia who often draw their salary and funding from taxpayers. Economist Dan Klein shows that the worldwide top-35 economics departments pull 76 percent of their faculty from their own graduates. He argues that the academic culture is pyramidal, not polycentric, and resembles a closed and genteel social circle. Meanwhile it draws on resources from taxpayers, foundations, endowments, and tuition payers, and it judges the social service delivered. The result is a self-organizing and self-validating circle.[1]
Another criticism is that universities tend more to pseudo-intellectualism than intellectualism per se; for example, to protect their positions and prestige, academics may over-complicate problems and express them in obscure language (e.g., the Sokal affair, a hoax by physicist Alan Sokal attempting to show that American humanities professors invoke complicated, pseudoscientific jargon to support their political positions.) Some observers argue that, while academics often perceive themselves as members of an elite, their influence is mostly imaginary: "Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy."[2]
Academic elitism suggests that in highly competitive academic environments only those individuals who have engaged in scholarship are deemed to have anything worthwhile to say, or do. It suggests that individuals who have not engaged in such scholarship are cranks. Steven Zhang of the Cornell Daily Sun has described the graduates of elite schools, especially those in the Ivy League, of having a "smug sense of success" because they believe "gaining entrance into the Ivy League is an accomplishment unto itself."
It is also an ideological belief that only those who attended the most elite or prestigious universities (such as Ivy League schools, Grandes Écoles, Oxbridge) and Russell Group are capable of obtaining significant wealth and power. Proponents of academic elitism justify this belief by claiming that this is just a by-product of capitalism.