I still vividly recall the days of 2011 when I enrolled in a French language class at Lahore’s National University of Modern Languages (NUML). Studying the world’s fifth most popular language was an enjoyable experience.

The rules of the language are different from English, with many conjugations and a rich vocabulary with words having strange accents. I enjoyed the taste of this new language. After about 14 years, I can remember only a few words and rules of the French language, as I could not practice French in Pakistan. And that’s not unusual.

Since I joined academia in 2017, I started to learn another language used exclusively in academia. The language of course and program learning objectives, academic writing, publications, research proposals, and funding proposals. During an academic semester, faculty is busy with preparing and marking quizzes, assignments, exams, and projects. This isolated ecosystem operates in its own linguistic and functional domain as an academic semester is replete with the activities in the language of academia, and one living in this ecosystem gets an occasional chance to meet with the people speaking the language of industry.

The title of a book has always attracted me: “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus.” The title resonates much with the current situation of academia and industry; both are living on different planets, at least in Pakistan.

In developed countries, a common habitat is established and nurtured. Both parties can coexist, interact, and cooperate there. But in a country like Pakistan, there is no common habitat; they continue to live on their own........

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