Universities: The Power of Professors

For all the talk about student power, authority on nearly all U.S. college campuses is held by the faculty. The dominance of professional, Ph.D-bearing scholars over the higher learning in America is now so complete that it amounts to what two Harvard sociologists call The Academic Revolution. That is the title of a massively detailed and perceptive book (Doubleday; $10) by David Riesman and Christopher

Jencks. They applaud the American graduate school, which creates these academic professionals, as "the envy of the world." But they also complain that the graduate school smothers...