As an OP here, I'd like to mention that I don't agree with this characterization at all. When I said academics are divorced from the real world, I was speaking of them largely conforming to particular demographics that make them a bit blind to broader trends in electoral politics and culture.

Academics do just fine picking up "adult life skills". Only a small minority of academics find academic employment from their mid-thirties or so on, so everyone moves to other sectors for the rest of their lives. It is not as if they are just hapless misfits or on the dole for the rest of their lives.