Dear Ken,
Somehow we got drifted from my original intent.
Academies of Art weren't adjectives. They were substantive part of vocational higher education, active since the 1500's and different from universities and gremial education, so you must include it in any reflection about it.
It is a pity that Plato loathed their programs because they were in a great manner Neo Platonic and, in a way, a reaction to the ruling aristotelism of the universities of the time (stable for 500! years,then).
The libraries Academies accumulated may give you a hint about their activities and how serious they were doing research.
I doubt that the word "academia" referencing the practices in universities may have been in use before the birth of the Modern Academies (lettere and scienze, Lincei, Disegno). Maybe I'm wrong about that but I'll risk to suggest that being academies so exclusive and being their work self regarded as superior precisely in the area of producing knowledge, that the word as an adjective started to be used in universities having a reference in the modern academies, detached from the original stairs of Athens.
The second part of my post inquiring about Gropius work in the Harvard graduate school of design got no answer. I'm really interested in clarify the origin of contemporary design education in my country based on the Harvard and the IIT (Mies Van der Rohe) programs.
Best,
Eduardo
PS. I'm sorry, Ken but the image of Plato (Terry Jones) being interviewed by Eric Idle about modern academies just popped in my mind
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