...a senior database developer colleague of mine described the use of foreign keys as "purely academic" citing that FK's provide little benefit that can't be enforced through procedural or application logic, thus freeing up database developers to affect code changes more quickly...
Should his full title to be change to "Senior database Cowboy-developer" ? 😉
Do you really think that Relationship constraints (eg FK's) do exist in relational database systems such as SQL Server, Oracle and all other I know about, just to please some academics?
To compliment your senior colleague opinion for " freeing up database developers to affect code changes more quickly" you can suggest him that having non-production environments is also pure academic idea. You can be much more effective making fixes and changes straight in production, significantly cutting time your users waiting for fixes and new functionality...