Showing papers by "Philip G. Altbach published in 1980"

The Crisis of the Professoriate

Abstract: The academic profession has been affected by substantial changes in the post-World War II period. The dramatic growth of universities in many nations in terms of enrollments and also of their societal role has placed the professoriate in a central social position. Challenges of expansion, pressures for reform and accountability, the student activism of the sixties, and other factors have endangered the traditional professorial role. Standard norms such as tenure and academic freedom have been questioned. Academic unions have appeared in many nations. This article focuses on a comparison of the major challenges to the academic profession. It discusses some of the ways in which the profession has been altered and analyzes how the professoriate has dealt with some of these difficult problems.