The Changing Academic Market

"The Changing Academic Market: General Trends and a Berkeley Case Study" is the inside story and scholarly analysis of a leading sociology department's search, during the mid-1970s, to fill several faculty positions. This was attempted in the middle of the fundamental changes to the U.S. university and college market that began in the late 1960s.  That sea change is exposed with candid self-awareness and examined in its practical effects on faculty hiring procedure, treatment of candidates, professors' relations with each other and their political stances, and recommendations for other academics in many kinds of departments who are in a similar recruitment process. 


Quality eBook formatting from Quid Pro Books includes linked notes, active contents, and all thirteen legible tables from the print edition. A new paperback edition is also available.


Neil J. Smelser is a senior university professor at Berkeley and the former chair of its sociology department. Working with Robin Content, he conducted a massive faculty hiring search while conditions of hiring and recruitment were seismically moving; they tell the story of that search with introspection and locate it within the literature on the higher education job market.