The Preservation of the Cosmopolitan Research University in the United States: The Prospect for the 1980s

Abstract

A major development in postwar American higher education has been the effort to make the humanities more cosmopolitan and the social sciences more universalistic, an effort referred to as International Studies and chiefly consisting of research and training in subjects that are non- North American and non-Western European in content. The stock of specialists having Ph.Ds doubled every nine years and is estimated to stand in 1979 at 17,500. A sample of twenty research universities is examined to show differential develop ment by type of institution, area, discipline, and degree of tenure. It is demonstrated that International Studies faculty represent a high percentage of non-science faculty with a high rate of tenure, making replacement a greater concern than whether young faculty receive tenure. Patterns of retire ment are calculated, leading to the conclusion that a dis proportionately high percentage of International Studies faculty will retire in the 1980s. Visits to fifteen research universities by NEH and Ford Foundation staff found an air of troubled optimism regarding the likelihood of re placement of departing faculty, an optimism that varied by area, administrative or teaching responsibility, and by disci pline. The student adaptations to the future are discussed, as are curricular and research strategies of faculty. Especially determinative of the health of International Studies at these universities is the existence of a National Defense Educa tion Act (NDEA) Title VI Center. Finally, the national research awards system is described and projections, using varying assumptions, are made of what supply and demand might entail. Areas and disciplines of disproportionate representa tion or absence are noted.