Current conversations on the state of academia contain a broad sense of crisis over changes in the body of university knowledge--the decline of literature, the unbridling of ethnic studies, the growth of various applied programs, and so on. Much of the concern revolves around a perceived deterioration of the academic core in which, the thinking goes, the university's teaching and research priorities are increasingly compromised by external financial and political interests. With data on faculty and course composition over the twentieth century for a global sample of universities, this book...

Current conversations on the state of academia contain a broad sense of crisis over changes in the body of university knowledge--the decline of literature, the unbridling of ethnic studies, the growth of various applied programs, and so on. Much of the concern revolves around a perceived deterioration of the academic core in which, the thinking goes, the university's teaching and research priorities are increasingly compromised by external financial and political interests. With data on faculty and course composition over the twentieth century for a global sample of universities, this book...