Academic Organization in American Higher Education

University Of California-Riverside, Riverside CA

Investigators

Abstract

SES- 0618121 Steven Brint University of California-Riverside The project studies continuity and change in the academic organization of American higher education. The study uses a unique database to analyze changes in the academic organization of American higher education over the past quarter century, a critical period of increasing segmentation in academe and stronger connection between higher education and American economic and social life. The studies that will be completed are united by a new way of thinking about academic knowledge. Instead of thinking about knowledge as unfolding through the intellectual pursuit of discovery, the project approaches knowledge as socially constructed by professional academics and influenced also by external economic and social actors. The study makes a crucial contribution to this perspective by incorporating organizational processes into studies of the diffusion, institutionalization, and decline of knowledge fields. The project looks at the diffusion process as mediated by organizational positions and aspirations within a differentiated and stratified field. The PI will study fundamental changes in academic organization taking place through the addition, merging, and closing of major academic units (schools and colleges), departments in arts and sciences, departments in professional schools, interdisciplinary programs, and general education requirements for undergraduates Inadequate data resources have limited studies of higher education. The College Catalog database developed by the PI allows for analysis of field-level structure and change over a 25-year period. Competing theories of institutional change can be empirically investigated for the first time, e.g., the five competing theories: (1) institutional isomorphism based on a single dominant model, (2) segmented isomorphism, (3) market-oriented adaptation, (4) niche-seeking within a hierarchical system, and (5) reproduction and mobility within the constraints of a stratified and segmented system. The specific policy-relevant studies will further aid understanding of some of the major system-wide influences: the shift from the liberal to the practical arts, the incorporation of previously marginalized groups within the organizational structures of colleges and universities, and controversies about the fate of general education. Broader Impact The college catalog data is a uniquely valuable data set. The data allows one to examine and compare the changing cultural "anatomy" of complex organizations over a long and historically important time period. The data create a unique opportunity for scholars to investigate the processes and structural covariates of organizational change.