New Academic Generation: A Profession in Transformation, The

The New Academic Generation: A Profession in Transformation

Martin J. Finkelstein, Robert K. Seal, and Jack H. Schuster. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, 236 pp., $32.50

ERNST BENJAMIN

PROFESSORS FINKELSTEIN, SEAL, AND Schuster herald a "new generation of American academics [that] is strikingly different from their more established senior colleagues." Although the generational change they discern is demographic-"race/ethnicity, nativity, and especially gender"-rather than attitudinal, it is in their view "unprecedented."

Perhaps their most surprising finding about this "new generation" is that, as of fall 1992, one-third of full-time faculty (172,319 of 514,976) had not held full-time faculty employment for more than seven years. This "considerable infusion of new blood" seriously challenges those who fear that an aging faculty offers no room to new scholars. Indeed, if one-third of faculty were replaced every seven years, one could expect a brand new faculty every generation (twenty-one years)-except, of course, to the extent that it is substantially the same one-third that turns over. The one persistent problem with this otherwise useful and important study is this inability to distinguish the proportion and demographic composition of those new entrants who are actually embarking on successful academic careers from either those who will leave academe with fewer than seven years' service or those who will remain in marginal secondtier positions.

The study is especially valuable for the systematic access it provides to underutilized data from the survey conducted as of fall 1992 for the 1993 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF) directed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). It offers an excellent overview and analysis of the data, which include faculty demographics, work and career patterns, and attitudes. But in drawing on data from a single survey year, the authors rely on the dubious proposition that the division of the faculty into two cohorts, a "new cohort" consisting of those who have held faculty appointments for seven or fewer years and a "senior cohort" consisting of those with more than seven years' service, permits observations about change. As the authors explain in an understated footnote, "These numbers, derived from the 1993 [sic] NSOPF Survey, constitute a single 'snapshot' rather than data points measured at different times. Accordingly, this single survey does not per se measure change, although strong inferences can be drawn from differences in frequency distributions between the new and senior cohorts." Unfortunately, even where we know change has occurred, we are often unable to distinguish the nature and extent of change using this methodology.

For example, the authors correctly stress that substantially fewer new-cohort faculty hold "ladder" ranks compared with seniorcohort faculty (69.5 percent compared with 84.1 percent). The same is true for tenure-track positions (66.8 percent versus 83.5 percent). This finding is consistent with other data. But the finding also reveals the relatively tenuous nature of the appointments of some new faculty members. Many of these appointments-we do not know how many-are held by individuals who rotate in and out of the profession rather than by career faculty members. Given the growth of these tenuous appointments, we may hypothesize that there is an increasing rate of churning in these second-tier positions. The fact that some sizable proportion of the new cohort is transitory must qualify any assertion about the magnitude of changes in the composition of the faculty that rests simply on statistical differences between the new and senior cohorts.

This has serious implications for the authors' principal assertions about the changing demographic composition of the faculty. In their summation, the authors move smoothly from noting the demographic difference between the new and senior cohorts, to the "increasing presence of women and minority faculty," to the "steady rate of change" that "has cumulatively shrunk the modal faculty type (white, male, U.S. born) to a slim majority-52.6 percent of all fulltime faculty members." Accordingly, they conclude, "the view afforded by this survey is of a faculty more richly diverse in their origins yet, at this stage, still closely allied with the traditional ways of conducting higher education." One of the strengths of The New Academic Generation is that it provides data and observations that significantly qualify, or even contradict, this conclusion.

Women constitute 40.8 percent of the new cohort compared with 28.5 percent of the senior cohort, and 41.8 percent of all full-time female faculty are in the new cohort. But to what extent is this owing to a "remarkable surge" in female participation in the seven years prior to the survey as compared with the emergence of a revolving pool of women in temporary, lower-tier academic appointments? Not only do the data confirm the usual pattern of women clustered at the lower ranks and less prestigious institutions, but the disproportions in the new cohort exceed those in the senior cohort. New-cohort males are three times as likely as their female counterparts to hold full professorships (16.6 percent of new-cohort males compared with 5.2 percent of new-cohort females), but senior-cohort males are only twice as likely (49.6 percent compared with 23.9 percent). Similarly, 29.1 percent of new-cohort males and 16.5 percent of females are tenured in contrast to 78.4 and 59.5 percent, respectively, in the senior cohort. Part of the explanation for these disparities, but hardly an encouraging one, lies in the fact that more than half of new-cohort women (51.7 percent) but fewer than one-third of new-cohort men (29 percent) have only master's or bachelor's degrees. This evidence points to a more stratified and less professional faculty rather than to an increasingly diverse one. It does not, in my view, confirm the authors' observation that "the progress made by faculty women in recent years is indisputably impressive."

The case that ethnic diversification is "rising steeply" (from 11.7 percent of the senior cohort to 17 percent of the new cohort-about 13.5 percent overall) is similarly dubious. Of all faculty of color, only Asians (nominally "Asian/Pacific Islanders") are a significantly larger proportion of the new (7.7 percent) than of the senior (4.4 percent) cohort. The increases among black, Hispanic, and Native American faculty were so slight and based on such small samples that they could not be included as such in a report (New Entrants to the Full- Time Faculty of Higher Education Institutions, NCES, October 1998) by the same authors for the Department of Education in which only statistically significant findings were publishable. There is a substantial difference in the proportion of foreign-born faculty: one in six of the new entrants, compared with one in nine of the senior cohort, was not born in the United States. Still, fewer than 15 percent of faculty overall are minorities, and fewer than 10 percent combined are black, Hispanic, or Native American (9.3 percent of the new cohort and 7.3 percent of the old). Even these small cohort differences are not necessarily changes, since some portion reflects the disproportionate number of short-term faculty in the new cohort. Such findings are unlikely to allay the concerns of proponents of affirmative action.

The further findings of the study can only add to these concerns. As the authors provide an excellent summary of the NSOPF findings on faculty attitudes, careers, and work patterns, they find repeatedly that the new and senior cohorts scarcely differ, but that women and, to a lesser extent, minorities, differ significantly from white males. Attitudinally, three-fourths of each cohort believe promotion should be based primarily on teaching, but men are more favorable to research than are women (even those in research universities). The new cohort is only slightly less likely than the senior cohort to believe that women and minorities are treated equitably, but women and minorities are substantially less likely than white males to share this view. Both cohorts feel increasing pressures on workload, funding, and facilities, but men are substantially less satisfied than women with research funding and more satisfied with work pressures and facilities.

With respect to careers and work, although the vast majority of faculty express general satisfaction with their academic careers, new entrants are understandably less satisfied, especially with respect to job security, than the senior cohort. Women, who are disproportionately found in non-tenure-track positions, are even less satisfied with job security than their male counterparts. Women are also substantially less satisfied with their salaries, opportunities for advancement, and opportunities to keep current in their fields. Those in the new cohort, reflecting current career needs, devote slightly less of their time to teaching and slightly more to research than those in the senior cohort. But despite career pressures, womeneven to some degree tenure-track women in research universities-devote substantially more of their time to teaching and less to research than men.

At bottom, one must ask whether the differences and similarities between the cohorts truly point to a more diverse academic generation. The primary demographic change is the vast numerical increase in female participation. The other major change, which the authors rightly emphasize in their conclusion, is the substantial shift from tenure-track to non-tenure-track appointments. Women are disproportionately clustered in these second-tier positions. Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans remain substantially underrepresented even in the new cohort. Consequently, The New Academic Generation seems to me to provide an excellent description of a profession that is not so much more diverse as it is more stratified.

Ernst Benjamin is associate general secretary and director of research at the AAUP.

Copyright American Association of University Professors Sep/Oct 1999
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