The Academic Marketplace

Theodore Caplow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351305945
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

"This volume is a must for anyone interested in academic problems and will produce the emotion of recognition in those concerned, and the emotion of surprise in those outside the field."- Los Angeles Times "Professors Caplow and McGee have given scholarly respectability to what many a professor has long suspected: Competition in the academic marketplace is as severe as in the business world. [Their book] might come to have the same function for the professor as Machiavelli's work had for ambitious princes."- Midwest Journal of Political Science The Academic Marketplace is a straightforward, hard-hitting exposu of the American university. Caplow and McGee consider all the working parts of the system and assess their suitability to the professed purpose. Their report on the actualities, myths, and consequences of routines thus amounts to an anatomy of an institution-an anatomy that does not present a pretty picture. We learn, for example, that the chief criteria used in making appointments are prestige and compatibility, not teaching ability. The authors describe the precipitous decline in teaching loads and then explain how this tendency is related to the new seller's market, on the one hand, and to the extravagantly indeterminate structure of the university as an institution, on the other. Not only is the temper judicious, the facts well gathered and competently marshaled, but the expression of results is invariably lucid. In a new introduction, the authors sort out fact from legend and discern trends, they address the validity of their own research methods and the applicability of their original findings to today's academic marketplace. They observe that the essential commodity offered in the academic marketplace is still the same-the mysterious intangible called prestige, by which universities, colleges, departments, disciplines, fields of inquiry, journals, and ultimately faculty candidates are ranked from high to low, and raised up and cast down accordingly.

Chapter 1

The Background

The methods of social research have been applied by university professors to every important American institution except their own. There is an entire literature on the family as a social institution, another on the business enterprise, much research on religious, governmental, military, eleemosynary, and political organizations, but virtually nothing about the university as a social institution.

Aside from a few pioneer studies of the academic profession, most of the general writings about higher education have not been based upon empirical data. There have been many studies of pedagogical matters-class size, instructional outcome, aptitude testing, and the like-but in these the forms of academic organization have been taken for granted. There have also been many studies of the educational and administrative problems of individual universities, but these usually stop short of useful generalization, and are, moreover, usually held as secret and not fit for publication.

In this chapter, we shall first consider the reasons why the academic profession ought to be studied and then review the principal writings from which ideas have been drawn for the present study.

Reasons for Research

There are two good-and quite separate-sets of reasons for studying the university as a social institution.

The first set of reasons is theoretical. The university is a fascinating specimen of social organization, remarkably unlike any other. Its roots, and some of its rituals, go back to the Middle Ages and beyond, but its principal business is innovation. Its hierarchical arrangements are simple and standardized, but the academic hierarchy includes a greater range of skills and a greater diversity of tasks than any business or military organization. Above all, the university is remarkable for pursuing an intricate program with little agreement about fundamental purposes. It is easy for people to agree that the purpose of a factory is production, even if they disagree violently about methods or about the distribution of earnings. It is not at all easy-as we shall presently see-to determine the fundamental purposes of a university or the relative importance of different activities in contributing to those purposes.

The second set of reasons is practical. The current problems of American higher education are serious and are almost certain to become more serious. Since 1945, universities have grown at an unprecedented rate, with very little structural reorganization, and little improvement of educational or administrative procedures. The growth of the past decade will probably be far surpassed in the next few years. The combined effect of a sharp rise in the adolescent population and a steady increase in the tendency to seek higher education will send enrollments soaring. According to the Fund for the Advancement of Education, “. . . it is evident that college enrollments are likely to reach double their 1954 level sometime between 1966 and 1971.”¹

Enrollment pressure is by no means the whole story, however. The proliferation of new subjects, new facilities, and new services, goes on apace, without much reference to the number of students. Some of the sharpest increases in university budgets and staffs were recorded during the period of declining enrollment which intervened between the departure of World War II veterans from the campus and the arrival of the first cohort of freshmen born during the war years.

With everything in the university doubling or tripling in size, the idea of a linear expansion is manifestly absurd. Even on the present scale of operation most of our universities seem to be outgrowing their organizational structures. There is a crying need for reform, and very little significant reform has occurred. Among other reasons, this is because we do not know enough about how the present system works.

The study of the academic labor market is, of course, only one of several possible approaches. The problem has other facets, of equal or greater importance. We have virtually no information, for example, about such matters as these:

the academic department as a work group,

the effectiveness of university administration,

cooperation, competition, and conflict among disciplines,

the characteristics of the undergraduate population,

the processes of curicular and professional recruitment,

the conditions of scholarly and scientific creativity,

the appropriate conditions for joint research and for individual research,

restriction of output by intellectual work groups,

the development of new disciplines,

the development of new university services,

the selection of research topics,

the decision-making process in higher education.

The present study was, in fact, planned as an entering wedge. It was intended to demonstrate that academic institutions are amenable to sociological field study-that the natives will tolerate the explorer in spite of his close identification with themselves. (Some of our colleagues expressed grave doubts on this point.)

As a topic, the academic labor market seemed at the outset-and seems still-to be peculiarly appropriate for a first approach to the institutional pattern of higher education. In analyzing the results, we have come to think of the faculty vacancy-and-replacement process as an intersection in several planes. There is an intersection between the career of an individual and the history of an institution. There is another intersection between the local system of the university and the national system of the discipline, and still another between the functions of teaching and research. The competing values by which men judge one another and are judged are thrown into high relief in these transactions.

The practical problems of academic expansion are largely labor-market problems. New buildings and new equipment are subject to some construction lag, but-in the decently long run-they need only to be financed to be brought into existence. The expansion of faculties is quite another matter. First, it is a slow process-a matter of decades rather than years. Secondly, it is something of a vicious circle. Faculties can be expanded only if graduate-school enrollment is expanded, and this-because it imposes a direct and heavy teaching burden-requires a prior faculty expansion in the major graduate centers. Thirdly, although the increase of demand for scholarly services poses a problem for society at large, it presents the academic profession with an opportunity to increase its share of social rewards. The dilemmas of this situation have scarcely been perceived, let alone solved.

Some Prior Perspectives

There are many writings from which we have drawn illumination or comfort, but the concepts used in the following pages to describe the academic institution have been most heavily influenced by a small number of oddly assorted authors.

Earliest of these is Adam Smith, whose The Wealth of Nations,² published in 1776, contains a section dealing with “the expense of the institutions for the education of youth,” and another which discusses the market value of “that un-prosperous race of men commonly called men of letters.” (We have restrained ourselves with difficulty from entitling this volume That Unprosperous Race.) Smith, it should be remembered, was a professor at Glasgow, and financial self-pity seems to have been as much a hallmark of the academic profession two centuries ago as it is today. Professional masochism can hardly fail to relish some of Smith’s comments under this heading-for example that “before the invention of the art of printing, a scholar and a beggar seem to have been terms very nearly synonymous.”

The Scottish philosopher had some remarkably cogent things to say about faculty salaries, endowments, the conflict between teaching and auxiliary duties, and the respective obligations of teachers and students. His observations against faculty autonomy are realistic and thoughtful:

“If the authority to which he [the professor] is subject resides in the body corporate, the college, or university, of which he himself is a member, and in which the greater part of the other members are, like himself, persons who either are, or ought to be teachers; they are likely to make a common cause, to be all very indulgent to one another, and every man to consent that his neighbor may neglect his duty, provided he himself is allowed to neglect his own.”

But the arguments against authoritative administration are even stronger.

“If die authority to which he is subject resides, not so much in the body corporate of which he is a member, as in some other extraneous persons ... it is not indeed in this case very likely that he will be suffered to neglect his duty altogether. All that such superiors, however, can force him to do, is to . . . give a certain number of lectures in the week or in the year. What those lectures shall be, must still depend upon the diligence of the teacher; and that diligence is likely to be proportioned to the motives which he has for exerting it. An extraneous jurisdiction of this kind, besides, is liable to be exercised both ignorantly and capriciously. In its nature it is arbitrary and discretionary, and the persons who exercise it, neither attending upon the lectures of the teacher themselves, nor perhaps understanding the sciences which it is his business to teach, are seldom capable of exercising it with judgment.”

In the nearly two centuries since this was written, the incentives for scholarly activity have seldom been examined, although thousands of pages have been written on the incentives of students. Here, too, Smith comes close to having the last word: “Where the masters really perform their duty, there are no examples, I believe, that the greater part of the students ever neglect theirs.”

Charles Horton Cooley was one of the founding fathers of American sociology, and his Life and the Student is an altogether remarkable book.³ At their best, Cooley’s reflections have the pithiness of Confucian maxims, even when they deal with the complex and tenuous stuff of social organization. No better appraisal of the academic marketplace has ever been made than in these brief comments:⁴

“It is strange that we have so few men of genius on our faculties; we are always trying to get them. Of course, they must have undergone the regular academic training (say ten years in graduate study and subordinate positions) and be gentlemanly, dependable, pleasant to live with, and not apt to make trouble by urging eccentric ideas.”

“Institutions and genius are in the nature of things antithetical, and if a man of genius is found living contentedly in a university, it is peculiarly creditable to both. As a rule professors, like successful lawyers or doctors, are just hard-working men of some talent.”

“It is true in university life as elsewhere that early success, as distinguished from eventual fame, usually implies an opportunism scarcely compatible with genius.”

Logan Wilson’s full-length study of The Academic Man⁵ was published in 1942. Some of the situations it describes have been changed by the progress of events, and some of its leading hypotheses have been rejected by subsequent studies. It remains, however, a pioneer work of permanent importance, particularly valuable for its emphasis (seven of its twelve chapters) on the evaluation of prestige. The pertinence of Wilson’s approach is shown by the present study, which was not originally oriented to prestige as a central variable; our findings, however, forced us to discuss the marketplace very largely in Wilson’s terms.⁶ The following descriptions by Wilson might almost stand as a brief summary of our data.

“The mean...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction to the 2001 Edition
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1. The Background
• 2. The Problem and the Method
• 3. How the Vacancies Occur
• 4. How Performance Is Evaluated
• 5. The Strategy of the Department
• 6. Procedures of Recruitment
• 7. Patterns of Choice
• 8. Selecting the Replacement
• 9. Academic government and the Personnel Process
• 10. Current Trends in the Marketplace
• 11. Discussion and Recommendations
• Index