In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • The Still Divided Academy: How Competing Visions of Power, Politics, and Diversity Complicate the Mission of Higher Education by Stanley Rothman, April Kelly-Woessner, and Matthew Woessner
  • David Farris
Stanley Rothman, April Kelly-Woessner, and Matthew Woessner, The Still Divided Academy: How Competing Visions of Power, Politics, and Diversity Complicate the Mission of Higher Education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011. 296 pp. Hardcover: $44.95. ISBN 978–1–4422–0806–3.

Stanley Rothman, April Kelly-Woessner, and Matthew Woessner’s book The Still Divided Academy: How Competing Visions of Power, Politics, and Diversity Complicate the Mission of Higher Education contrasts perspectives of three primary stakeholders in higher education: faculty, students, and administration. The authors illustrate competing opinions and visions of the academy’s mission, structure, politics, governance, academic freedom, and diversity.

Underlying the objectives and methodologies in this text is a Carl Ladd and Seymour Lipset model that they used in their 1975 study, The Divided Academy, to explore faculty and administration attitudes, politics, and perceptions of higher education. Ladd and Lipset surveyed 111 institutions and received 3,500 responses from faculty, administrators, and students illustrating a schism among respondents on the academy and sociopolitical ideologies. In The Still Divided Academy, Rothman, Kelly-Woessner, and Woessner find that little has changed except for the extent to which this divide has been exacerbated by contemporary challenges to higher education.

Based on over 4,000 responses to the 1999 North American Academic Survey Study (NAASS), The Still Divided Academy is a foundational text for anyone engaged in discussions about the reformation of colleges and universities in response to social and economic pressures. The authors’ analyses describe the diverse and often conflicting array of views and ideologies inherent in colleges and universities using contemporary issues facing higher education as context. The evidence presented encourages readers to consider the intra-organizational relationship among faculty, administrators, and students in relation both to the institution as a whole and also within and among themselves. The authors incorporate historical research to frame their observations and provide context using existing research and commentary from such leaders in higher education as Derek Bok and John Immerwahr. Statistics generated from the survey results both support and contradict some commonly held beliefs about the academy. For example, survey results confirm that faculty are more likely to be “liberal” than the administration and that collectively the academy tends to be more liberal than the general public, a finding consistent with prior research.

One statistic that may intrigue readers is evidence of the declining importance of tenure. Only 34% of all faculty consider tenure to be “essential” (p. 173).Senior faculty are more likely to perceive tenure as “essential” than the newest generations of faculty entering academia who consider tenure to be only “somewhat important” or “very important” (p. 174)

The book is well organized and divided into seven chapters beginning with an introduction to the book, its organization, and methodology. The authors make their intentions clear about the purpose of the book; it is designed to capture information about the current climate of higher education to facilitate change during a period of transition. The publication of the book is also in response to external pressures on institutions to become more competitive, accountable, and responsive to public demands.

The subsequent six chapters focus on the mission of universities, distribution of power, politics, diversity, academic freedom, and reflections on the future of higher education. Each chapter examines the responses of faculty, administrators, and students (typically in this order) to the NAASS survey and builds progressively complex illustrations of similarities, conflicts, and differences among the respondents’ respective views. Tables present statistics that break down the survey results by political party affiliation, gender, field (e.g., social science, humanities, professional, etc.), and role (i.e., faculty, administrator, or student). They are interspersed throughout the book and are easy to reference. The conclusion provides a comparative synopsis of the sentiments and ideologies of faculty, staff, and students and how they may influence or complicate eminent changes in institutions of higher education.

Throughout the book, the authors weave political party affiliation into the analysis of each subject. Results of the survey indicate that faculty and administrators...

pdf

Share