Higher education is becoming destabilized in the face of extraordinarily rapid change. The composition of the academy's most valuable assetthe facultyand the essential nature of faculty work are being transformed. Jack H. Schuster and Martin J. Finkelstein describe the transformation of the American faculty in the most extensive and ambitious analysis of the American academic profession undertaken in a generation. A century ago the American research university emerged as a new organizational form animated by the professionalized, discipline-based scholar. The research university model persisted through two world wars and greatly varying economic conditions. In recent years, however, a new order has surfaced, organized around a globalized, knowledge-based economy, powerful privatization and market forces, and stunning new information technologies. These developments have transformed the higher education enterprise in ways barely imaginable in generations past. At the heart of that transformation, but largely invisible, has been a restructuring of academic appointments, academic work, and academic careersa reconfiguring widely decried but heretofore inadequately described. This volume depicts the scope and depth of the transformation, combing empirical data drawn from three decades of national higher education surveys. The authors' portrait, at once startling and disturbing, provides the context for interpreting these developments as part of a larger structural evolution of the national higher education system. They outline the stakes for the nation and the challenging work to be done.
List of Tables and FiguresPreface to the Paperback EditionPrefaceAcknowledgmentsPart One: Overview of the American Facultty1. Establishing the Framework2. The American Faculty in Perspective3. The Professoriate in ProfilePart Two: The Faculty at Work4. The Changing Complexion of Faculty Work5. Academic Culture and Values and the Quality of Work LifePart Three: The Academic Career6. The Changing Academic Career7. The Revolution in Academic Appointments: A Closer Look8. Compensation and Academic Careers: Trends and Issues9. Pathways to the ProfessoriatePart Four: Assessing Contemporaray Academic Life10. American Academic Life Restructured11. What's Ahead? Agendas for Policy Analysis, Research, and Action on Academic StaffingAppendixesA. The National Faculty SurveysB. Selected National Faculty Surveys: A Concordance of ContentsC. Interpreting Faculty Surveys: Challenges and StrategiesD. Variables for Classifying Faculty SubgroupsE. Definitions of Terms Used in Tables and FiguresF. Academic Appointments: Historical MilestonesG. Faculty Compensation: Data SourcesH. Note on Accessing the Survey InstrumentsI. Faculty Diversity: Race and Ethnicity CategoriesJ. Appendix TablesBibliographyIndex
""A unique study of the present academic moment and, given the magnitude of effort involved in any attempted replication of its methods or results, The American Faculty will not be easily superceded.""
