The contemporary academic labor market is examined using concepts from labor market economics and sociology to elucidate why teaching, universally acknowledged to be at the center of American academic life, is not at the center of the academic labor market and is only modestly rewarded. First, tenets of the neoclassical labor market model are…

Based on information gathered in a survey of senior academic administrators and from in-depth, on-site interviews with faculty, staff, and trustees on campuses across the United States, the successes and failures of principal academic personnel--traditional tenure, tenure with modifications, and nontenure term-contract systems--are described.…

A framework for integrating part-time college faculty into an existing institutional structure is presented. Suggestions are offered on ways that department and division heads can make personnel policies that meet both the part-timer's need for fairness, certainty, and structure, and the college's need for flexibility and order. Policies are…

This book on the economics of education is concerned primarily with how and why the student goes about acquiring whatever human capital he or she wishes and how the institutional setting of the university influences the amount of human capital that the student acquires. The learning process is dealt with, and an economic theory of learning, which…