Understanding American Academics: What Have We Learned and Where Do We Go From Here? Occasional Papers Series No. 6 (original) (raw)

An overview of the academic profession in America is presented, and many of the studies of this topic are categorized into a coherent framework. A search of the research literature on college and university faculty appearing in the post-World War II period was conducted. The two preemptive sources of kncwledge about faculty were doctoral dissertations and the research reports of academic social scientists. Other sources of knowledge about faculty are noted. The report was designed to bring together the scattered,'largely inaccessible results of social scientific and distertation research on faculties and the research rn different aspects cf the faculty role and different types of faculty. In addition to generalizations about academic people, results of"a.content analysis of the reseatch literature are presented. Some substantive and methcdological suggestions for future inquiry are also offered. (SE)