Higher education is becoming destabilized in the face of extraordinarily
rapid change. The composition of the academy's most valuable asset--the
faculty--and 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
careers--a 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.
