The phrase "academic elite" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to a group of individuals who are highly educated or distinguished in academic fields.
Example: "The conference was attended by members of the academic elite, who shared their groundbreaking research with the audience."
Alternatives: "intellectual elite" or "scholarly elite".
But outside of a small academic elite, it doesn't matter.
The academic elite in Cuba initially scorned him for lacking a Ph.D.
They have gone from being considered part of the academic elite to being seen as amusing conservatives.
In New York, the Bronx High School of Science and Stuyvesant High School are geared toward the academic elite.
Instead it runs through university faculties and the leafy suburbs of north Tehran where Iran's academic elite make their homes.
Was it coincidence, though, that many of these children were the gifted offspring of Britain's academic elite?
International, regional and bilateral donors and development banks have catered to Haiti's predatory political, economic, religious and academic elites and their profitable private school business.
When the history of how a good crisis went to waste gets written up, it will surely contain a big chapter on the failure of our academic elites.
DAVOS, Switzerland — With Europe in a sharp slowdown and the United States forging only a slow recovery, the business and academic elites gathering here are scouring the global landscape for any new economic success story.
The films do not really function as partisan political tools; if anything, they share a populist impulse that finds its devils mostly in the interlocking political, business and academic elites.
Then almost overnight CNN's Lou Dobbs won a large following by transforming himself from a placid newscaster into a populist foe of illegal immigration, "global jihadists" and "political and academic elites".
