This book addresses academic labor markets in three countries: France, Germany, and the United States. The management of faculty careers is a critical issue in university autonomy, and in many countries recent reforms have increasingly addressed this area. Musselin's exhaustive empirical research on academic job hiring practices and faculty career patterns included over 200 interviews with faculty members and administrators concerning two disciplines: history and math. Each of the countries has very different historical traditions with regard to how peers recruit their colleagues within the...

This book traces the evolution of recent reforms in higher education, including the ideas, representations, ideologies and theories on which they are built, offers comparisons within and between countries, and the assesses the overall impact of the reforms.