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Jeff -- I'm glad to see that people are beginning to address these issues.

I can't speak for every composer, but I know that my interest in electronic music is discovering ways to treat noise (as in found sounds or other concrete examples) in the same developmental ways as traditional tonal melodies. I have the luxury of doing this while I'm under that academic shelter that encourages it, and I'm not under a lot of pressure to reach any one particular audience. There's also the obvious aspect of getting to play with the infinite possibilities of timbre and sonic motion with electronics, and when you have those sorts of possibilities at your disposal, why confine your machines to what conventional instruments can do?

That being, said, I'll also be the last composer to ever dismiss more popular conventions, and if it makes you feel better, there are those composers in academia that embrace popular forms and encourage their students to not be so dismissive of them, so progress is being made.

Maybe the reason that neither camp will acknowledge the stylistic envelopes that they've sealed themselves in is because neither wants to see themselves as afraid of reaching across those boundaries. But if you see the dichotomy, then certainly it's obvious to others, and if those others speak up, then maybe the gap will close a little. In the meantime, I'd recommend taking a listen to some of the works of Shawn Naidoo and Joseph Waters, both of whom write electronic music that's not afraid of the beat. Joe is also from that generation of composers that got their start in popular music, much like myself.

Although some of Autechre's best material has been actually beat-less in the conventional sense, their whole ideal is about the restructuring and in a sense, progressive decay of popular music such as hip-hop and techno, from which their oeuvre descends. Thus they aim to maintain certain conventions that are key to those two original genres - the beat - and push the "beat" out a bit. Excuse the pun ;)

About the beat: electronic music began as means of creating something new, doing things that could not be done with traditional instruments, at all. Examples: Gesang der Junglinge, Fontana Mix, the first 'concert of noises'. the genre got started by people who were not interested in imitaing existing instruments or styles. So, in a sense, for electronic music, it is traditional to be radical. Working with the beat, well, after Stravinsky, Varese, ... show me something a decent percussionist can't do.
I recently heard a band from Iceland playing in Amsterdam. A computer was making IRCAM- like sounds, electric bass player was making Metallica-like sounds, and drummer was making 'boom, chick' (really polka beat, but loud). I got the impression that the audience was ignoring the computer, and getting off on the drummers 'groove'. That may be one reason why 'academic' (please give me your defenition of academic music) composers are not interested in the beat.

I think that Devon's point above is right on target. It is important to look at the path through which many popular experimental musicians came to experimental music. Hip hop and other sample based music seems to be the link between non-experimental popular music and experimental music. Hip hop for many people is what made them realize that music is not static, sounds are malleable. However, beats are fundamental hip hop; if they aren't always there, they are usually implied. So (I think) people create a certain allegiance to the fundamentals of a music that expanded their musical horizons. There is a little bit of irony in it to me, but to this extent I do not think it is done as a way of antagonistically distinguishing oneself from the academic world. It is not so intentional and conscious.

I'm not claiming that all academics or all experimentalists eschew this or that, I'm suggesting that these assumptions get in the way of the potential for cultural cross-pollination. Counter-examples abound (check out pomomusic.org's trackback URL).

I know a lot of academics that are great counter-examples. But we musn't let our own counter-examples prevent the honest acceptance that academia has reasons for promoting stylistic conformity, as does the popular experimental music. Individual agendae themselve, walk like me, rock like me, the market forces of tenure and of uber-stardom themselves encourage the dismissal of styles.

First sorry for my English.
For any reason one thing is popular and the other isn't. Better not mix things. The best popular music (electronic or not) is festive, ritualistic and provided with beat and simple scales. Don't turn it into a pretentious complexity when it has its limitations.

On the other side music after modernism (electronic or not) has much more ambitious aims not attainable by just including more kitsch and "strange" sounds on it. No one who has an academic formation ever wonders of reducing his work to the poorness and easiness of mere popular means of composing (mostly cut and paste).

The question of beeing electronic or not is just about weather you use a brush or a spatula.