The Reconfiguration of the American Academic Workforce

IIE Centennial Impact Report

The U.S. higher education landscape has shifted considerably over the past quarter century, undergoing a new “academic revolution” that has had significant implications for the teaching staff of U.S. colleges and universities. Against this backdrop of a changing higher education environment in the U.S., the purpose of this paper is to suggest how certain megatrends have translated into a new and fragmented topographical map of the American academic profession, one in which definable subgroups can be identified with distinctive constellations of motivations and constraints that are directly relevant to the structure and policies of international scholarly exchange programs.