Prospects for Faculty in the Arts and Sciences: A Study of Factors Affecting Demand and Supply, 1987 to 2012
ISBN: 9781400860517
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Princeton University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: College teachers -- United States -- Supply and demand; Science and the arts -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- United States;

This thought-provoking study of academic job markets over the next quarter century uses rigorous analysis to project substantial excess demand for faculty starting in the 1997-2002 period. Particularly severe imbalances are projected in the humanities and social sciences. Contrary to popular impressions, however, these projected shortages are not caused by any unusual "bunching" of retirements. The authors' discussion of factors affecting the outlook for academic employment includes information on changes in the age distributions of faculties, trends in enrollment, shifts in the popularity of fields of study, changes in the faculty-student ratio, and the continuing increase in the time spent by the typical graduate student in obtaining a doctorate.

This work will appeal to a broad audience. It will be essential reading for those who are responsible for determining the size and character of graduate programs in universities, for aspiring academics who are looking for a sense of their job prospects, for college and university faculty members and administrators who must recruit new colleagues, and for those interested in the federal role in higher education.

Originally published in 1989.

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William G. Bowen was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on October 6, 1933. He received a bachelor's degree in economics in 1955 from Denison University and a doctorate from Princeton University. The university hired him as an assistant professor and promoted him to full professor in 1965. He was the director of graduate studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton from 1964 to 1966. He was the president of the university from 1972 to 1988. While president, he pressed elite colleges to give preference to poor and minority applicants and oversaw the first admission of women to Princeton University.

He wrote or co-wrote about two dozen books during his lifetime including The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions, Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education, and The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values. His memoir, Lessons Learned: Reflections of a University President, was published in 2011. In 2012, he received the National Humanities Medal for putting "theories into practice" in economics and higher education. He died from colon cancer on October 20, 2016 at the age of 83.

(Bowker Author Biography)


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