It looks like the comment is posted to a wrong thread.
(FTR, the setup above is used for practical, mostly commercial programming; I've left academia without even finishing my post-grad study, decades ago.)
I don’t believe they were referencing anything about literal higher education. In this context, saying something is an “academic exercise” is just a way of saying it’s being done more for one’s own edification, rather than any purely practical purposes.
