The American Faculty

The American Faculty PDF Author: Jack H. Schuster
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421402076
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 602

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Book Description
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.

The American Faculty

The American Faculty PDF Author: Jack H. Schuster
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801882838
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 612

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Book Description
"In-depth, insightful, with a masterful handling of the relevant data, The American Faculty provides the most comprehensive overview of the status of the academic profession that is available." -- Jay Chronister, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia

The Fall of the Faculty

The Fall of the Faculty PDF Author: Benjamin Ginsberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199831475
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Until very recently, American universities were led mainly by their faculties, which viewed intellectual production and pedagogy as the core missions of higher education. Today, as Benjamin Ginsberg warns in this eye-opening, controversial book, "deanlets"--administrators and staffers often without serious academic backgrounds or experience--are setting the educational agenda. The Fall of the Faculty examines the fallout of rampant administrative blight that now plagues the nation's universities. In the past decade, universities have added layers of administrators and staffers to their payrolls every year even while laying off full-time faculty in increasing numbers--ostensibly because of budget cuts. In a further irony, many of the newly minted--and non-academic--administrators are career managers who downplay the importance of teaching and research, as evidenced by their tireless advocacy for a banal "life skills" curriculum. Consequently, students are denied a more enriching educational experience--one defined by intellectual rigor. Ginsberg also reveals how the legitimate grievances of minority groups and liberal activists, which were traditionally championed by faculty members, have, in the hands of administrators, been reduced to chess pieces in a game of power politics. By embracing initiatives such as affirmative action, the administration gained favor with these groups and legitimized a thinly cloaked gambit to bolster their power over the faculty. As troubling as this trend has become, there are ways to reverse it. The Fall of the Faculty outlines how we can revamp the system so that real educators can regain their voice in curriculum policy.

The Rise and Decline of Faculty Governance

The Rise and Decline of Faculty Governance PDF Author: Larry G. Gerber
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421414643
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
There was a time when the faculty governed universities. Not anymore. The Rise and Decline of Faculty Governance is the first history of shared governance in American higher education. Drawing on archival materials and extensive published sources, Larry G. Gerber shows how the professionalization of college teachers coincided with the rise of the modern university in the late nineteenth century and was the principal justification for granting teachers power in making educational decisions. In the twentieth century, the efforts of these governing faculties were directly responsible for molding American higher education into the finest academic system in the world. In recent decades, however, the growing complexity of “multiversities” and the application of business strategies to manage these institutions threatened the concept of faculty governance. Faculty shifted from being autonomous professionals to being “employees.” The casualization of the academic labor market, Gerber argues, threatens to erode the quality of universities. As more faculty become contingent employees, rather than tenured career professionals enjoying both job security and intellectual autonomy, universities become factories in the knowledge economy. In addition to tracing the evolution of faculty decision making, this historical narrative provides readers with an important perspective on contemporary debates about the best way to manage America’s colleges and universities. Gerber also reflects on whether American colleges and universities will be able to retain their position of global preeminence in an increasingly market-driven environment, given that the system of governance that helped make their success possible has been fundamentally altered.

The Faculty Factor

The Faculty Factor PDF Author: Martin J. Finkelstein
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421420937
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 585

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Book Description
In an academy squeezed hard by formidable pressures, what is the future of the faculty? Over the past 70 years, the American university has become the global gold standard of excellence in research and graduate education. The unprecedented surge of federal research support of the postWorld War II American university paralleled the steady strengthening of the American academic profession itself, which managed to attract the best and brightest educators from around the world while expanding the influence of the "faculty factor" throughout the academic realm. But in the past two decades, escalating costs and intensifying demands for efficiency have resulted in a wholesale reshaping of the academic workforce, one marked by skyrocketing numbers of contingent faculty members. Extending Jack H. Schuster and Martin J. Finkelstein's richly detailed classic The American Faculty: The Restructuring of Academic Work and Careers, this important book documents the transformation of the American faculty—historically the leading global source of Nobel laureates and innovation—into a diversified and internally stratified professional workforce. Drawing on heretofore unpublished data, the book provides the most comprehensive contemporary depiction of the changing nature of academic work and what it means to be a college or university faculty member in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The rare higher education study to incorporate multinational perspectives by comparing the status and prospects of American faculty to teachers in the major developing economies of Europe and East Asia, The Faculty Factor also explores the redistribution of academic work and the ever-more diverse pathways for entering into, maneuvering through, and exiting from academic careers. Using the tools of sociology, anthropology, and demography, the book charts the impact of waves of technological change, mass globalization, and the severe financial constraints of the last decade to show the impact on the lives and careers of those who teach in higher education. The authors propose strategic policy recommendations to extend the strengths of American higher education to retain leadership in the global economy. Written for professors, adjuncts, graduate students, and academic, political, business, and not-for-profit leaders, this data-rich study offers a balanced assessment of the risks and opportunities posed for the American faculty by economic, market-driven forces beyond their control.

The Faculty Lounges

The Faculty Lounges PDF Author: Naomi Schaefer Riley
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
ISBN: 1566638887
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
College tuition has risen four times faster than the rate of inflation in the past two decades. While faculties like to blame the rising costs on fancy athletic buildings and bloated administrations, professors are hardly getting the short end of the stick. Spending on instruction has increased twenty-two percent over the past decade at private research universities. Parents and taxpayers shouldn't get overheated about faculty salaries: tenure is where they should concentrate their anger. The jobs-for-life entitlement that comes with an ivory tower position is at the heart of so many problems with higher education today. Veteran journalist Naomi Schaefer Riley, an alumna of one of the country's most expensive and best-endowed schools, explores how tenure has promoted a class system in higher education, leaving contingent faculty who are barely making minimum wage and have no time for students to teach large swaths of the undergraduate population. She shows how the institution of tenure forces junior professors to keep their mouths shut for a decade or more if they disagree with senior faculty about anything from politics to research methods. Lastly, she examines how the institution of tenure—with the job security, mediocre salaries, and low levels of accountability it entails—may be attracting the least innovative and interesting members of our society into teaching.

The American Faculty

The American Faculty PDF Author: Jack H. Schuster
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421402076
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 602

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Book Description
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.

Shaping the American Faculty

Shaping the American Faculty PDF Author: Roger L. Geiger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351490990
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Beginning in the twentieth century, American faculty increasingly viewed themselves as professionals who were more than mere employees. This volume focuses on key developments in the long process by which the American professoriate achieved tenure, academic freedom, and a voice in university governance.Christian K. Anderson describes the formation of the original faculty senates. Zachary Haberler depicts the context of the founding and early activities of the American Association of University Professors. Richard F. Teichgraeber focuses on the ambiguity over promotion and tenure when James Conant became president of Harvard in 1933. In "Firing Larry Gara," Steve Taaffe relates how the chairman of the department of history and political science was abruptly fired at the behest of a powerful trustee. In the final chapter, Tom McCarthy provides an overview of the evolution of student affairs on campuses and indirectly illuminates an important negative feature of that evolution the withdrawal of faculty from students' social and moral development.This volume examines twentieth-century efforts by American academics to establish themselves as an independent constituency in America's colleges and universities.

The American Math and Science Student Support Act

The American Math and Science Student Support Act PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Subcommittee on Science
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This document presents the transcript of a congressional hearing to consider the American Math and Science Student Support Act, H.R. 4595. The legislation is designed to address the issue of attracting a greater proportion of U.S. citizens to graduate study in science, mathematics, and engineering. The hearings include testimony and prepared statements from witnesses who have been asked to comment on the possible effects of the bill on increasing the participation of U.S. citizens in such graduate study. Witnesses include Dr. Jules LaPidus, President, Council of Graduate Schools, representing the Association of American Universities, Washington, D.C.; Dr. Frank Morris, Dean of Graduate Studies, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland, and President, Council of Historically Black Graduate Schools; Dr. William Powers, Provost, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan; Dr. Stanford Penner, Professor of Applied Mechanics and Engineering Sciences, University of California, San Diego, California, and Chairman of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the International Exchange and Movement of Engineers. Appendices include: Dr. Morris' address to the plenary session of the Council of Graduate Schools on Dec. 5, 1991; a letter from J. P. Densler to P. Henry; a statement from NAFSA Association of International Educators; and a statement from the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. (MDH)

The American Academic Profession

The American Academic Profession PDF Author: Joseph C. Hermanowicz
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421402548
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
The academic profession, like many others, is rapidly being transformed. This book explores the current challenges to the profession and their broad implications for American higher education. Examining what professors do and how academia is changing, contributors to this volume assess current and potential threats to the profession. Leading scholars in sociology and higher education explore such topics as structural and cognitive change, socialization and deviance, career development, and professional autonomy and regulation. A comprehensive analysis of the significant questions facing this crucial profession, The American Academic Profession will be welcomed by students and scholars as well as by administrators and policy makers concerned with the future of the academy.

The American Academic Profession

The American Academic Profession PDF Author: Stephen Richards Graubard
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412835848
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
"This book covers well the issues and problems of the U.S. academic profession in the second half of the twentieth century." -- Contemporary Science The tale of the American academic profession-that large company of men and women, unprecedented in its size and diversity-needs to be written. A large historical literature on America's colleges and universities exists, but much of it is unashamedly hagiographic. On the other hand, more critical works see American universities as being in dire need of massive reform. This charge is not sustained by the contributors to The American Academic Profession, who hope to shatter the code of silence that passes for discretion, by focusing on the forces that have conspired to create the American academic profession. Graubard includes contributions from important scholars around the world: "How the Academic Profession is Changing" by Arthur Levine; "Small Worlds, Different Worlds: The Uniqueness and Troubles of American Academic Professions" by Burton R. Clark; "The Elusive Academic Profession: Complexity and Change" by Francis Oakley; "Uncertainties in the Changing Academic Profession" by Walter E. Massey; "Stewards of Opportunity: America's Public Community Colleges" by Patrick M. Callan; "Public Universities as Academic Workplaces" by Patricia J. Gumport; "Survival of the Fittest? Postgraduate Education and the Professoriate at the Fin de Sicle" by R. M. Douglas; "Reflections on the Culture Wars" by Eugene Goodheart; "A Blow Is Like an Instrument" by Charles Bernstein; "The Science Wars and the Future of the American Academic Profession" by Jay A. Labinger; "The Scientist as Academic" by Cheryl B. Leggon; "The 'Place' of Knowledge in the American Academic Profession" by Sheldon Rothblatt; "Border Crossings: Organizational Boundaries and Challenges to the American Professoriate" by Theodore R. Mitchell; "The Development of Information Technology in American Higher Education" by Martin Trow; and "An International Academic Crisis? The American Professoriate in Comparative Perspective" by Philip G. Altbach. The American Academic Profession is not sanguine about what is currently happening in higher education, or what it imagines the future portends. It simply asks the question: Can a society truly understand its universities and colleges when it has moved too quickly from uncritical admiration to uniformed and ungenerous complaint? This volume intends to dispel some long-persistent myths in favor of objective truth. It is a must for anyone interested in academic problems, for those who work in higher education, and for everyone interested in American ideas, traditions, and social and intellectual history. Stephen R. Graubard is editor of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and its journal, Daedalus, and professor of history emeritus at Brown University.