The Stratification of the Academy

Traces stratification & inequality in higher education from the height of the post-WWII growth of the university system in the early 1970s to the recent period, drawing on a variety of sources. It is shown that the high-level research university reached its apex in the early 1970s, institutionalizing a research culture that was based on national rather than local allegiances, valued research over teaching, & prized pure over applied research activities. Further, private & state colleges are demonstrated to have mimicked the research culture by seeking a constant expansion of prestige through the hiring of pedigreed faculty. The erosion of the research culture since the early 1970s is explained as a consequence of demographic shifts & economic & political changes. It is suggested that attacks on the research culture have yet to seriously affect the schools in which that culture was created, but have served to stratify the university system more than ever. The majority of colleges & universities are described as reeling from the retrenchment in higher education & forced to reestablish contacts with the local & regional cultures they were originally designed to serve. D. M. Smith