A large historical literature on America's college and universities exists, but much of it is unashamedly hagiographic. The charge of more critical volumes that American universities are in dire need of massive reform is not sustained by the contributors to The American Academic Profession. They 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.

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, whose contributions are from important scholars around the world intends to dispel some long-persistent myths in favor of objective truth. It is a must for anyone interest in academic problems, for those who work in higher education, and for everyone interested in American ideas, traditions, and social and intellectual history.

How the Academic Profession is Changing; Small Worlds, Different Worlds: The Uniquenesses and Troubles of American Academic Professions; The Elusive Academic Profession: Complexity and Change; Uncertainties in the Changing Academic Profession; Stewards of Opportunity: America's Public Community Colleges; Public Universities as Academic Workplaces; Survival of the Fittest? Postgraduate Education and the Professoriate at the Fin de Siècle; Reflections on the Culture Wars; A Blow Is Like an Instrument; The Science Wars and the Future of the American Academic Profession; The Scientist as Academic; The "Place" of Knowledge in the American Academic Profession; Border Crossings: Organizational Boundaries and Challenges to the American Professoriate; The Development of Information Technology in American Higher Education; An International Academic Crisis? The American Professoriate in Comparative Perspective