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 much-needed diversity in education, often fails to link learning and life, and continually belittles its teaching duties.
The Academic Revolution is filled with footnotes; still, it is not a pedantic academic treatise and fairly sparkles with aphoristic insight (see box). Riesman and Jencks visited only about 150 of the nation's 2,200 colleges, relied more heavily on their own judgments and interviews than on archive materials or administrative documents. Despite this informal method—or perhaps because of it—the book is likely to stand for years as the most reliable analysis of higher education in the U.S.
Peasant Revolts. The authors convincingly dispel the nostalgic notion that the nation's colleges, until this century, were amiable castles of learning where faculty and students worked harmoniously together. The early U.S. college teachers were nonprofessionals, often aspiring clergymen or wealthy aristocrats; they saw themselves "as policemen whose job was to keep recalcitrant and benighted undergraduates in line." The faculty, in turn, was intimidated by domineering presidents intent on "imposing their personal stamp on the entire college." The aim of trustees was generally to promote a special interest—a religion, a social class, a vocation or locality. As a result, they "intervened in college affairs far more disastrously than is usual today." Riesman and Jencks cite a number of stu dent rebellions during the 19th century, which they compare to "peasant revolts against tyranny."
This situation was changed drastically by the research-oriented university, which developed in the late 19th century and has grown steadily in influence since. It solidified knowledge into disciplines in which "like-minded men established machinery for remaining like-minded." It also radically shifted power to faculty committees and department chairmen. These professional scholars now decide who should be admitted to graduate schools and what should be taught there, hold virtual veto power over the selection of their colleagues and often over the choice of the president. They turn out highly homogenized Ph.D.s who in turn staff countless colleges that, instead of pursuing distinct goals, increasingly shape curriculums to get their graduates into the university grad schools.