My daytime job is an academic researcher; I do research and analyze data on mortgage & real estate markets.

There are plenty of people out there that come out of business school with knowledge of spreadsheets and academic models and have zero clue about what it takes to do deals in the real world.  

In the burbs, you can get an entire house for that. etc etc etcUnless all those factors (and many others) are changing at an alarming rate, I think this is an academic discussion that does almost nothing to inform us as real professionals.  

Our schedule has always been at the mercy of our academics and jobs.

Before regulations went into effect in my city, I saw listings on Airbnb that were going for less than they would if they had been on the LTR market.I list on the STR market during the summer and on the MTR market during the academic year.

I am in a position to move anywhere in the country to continue my academic career. 

The yearly group of students that historically rent this house are from an excellent, academically minded, "calm" fraternity.

If you have a strong desire to learn more about business from an academic perspective and you can get a scholarship or have another way to pay for the education without going into debt, then that's definitely a route to consider.

I'm a bit tentative b/c I know how real life learning is way better than academic.

Many Fortune-500 Human Resources departments use the theory of 70-20-10 in developing employees which apply here. 70% is learned by doing, 20% learned from peers, and 10% is academic/book/classroom training.Below is another rendition of the same theory.