This essay explores three orientations to knowledge: the scholar, the intellectual, and the bricoleur. It argues that although the scholar and the intellectual are tied closely to the Liberal Arts and Humanities and dominate academic public relations discourse, both students and faculty increasingly use the practice of bricolage to gather and organize information. Associated with postmodernity, bricolage is a functional response to both the increasing velocities of information flows and the breakdown of cultural hierarchies. Bricolage, however, contradicts the scholarly tradition and the prevailing discourses of rigor and accountability. This essay argues that academia responds to this shift by focusing on literacies, the skills necessary to engage with the techno-information landscape, and by implementing quality management strategies that cordon off salient disciplinary knowledge sets, prescribe efficient pedagogies, and then apply assessment matrices. It also considers how the Digital Humanities engage with these orientations.