Office of the Vice Provost, University of California at Riverside, 321 Surge, Riverside, California 92521; e-mail: steven.brint@ucr.edu.
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The Market Model and the Growth and Decline of Academic Fields in U.S. Four-Year Colleges and Universities, 1980–2000†
Article first published online: 30 MAY 2012
DOI: 10.1111/j.1573-7861.2012.01318.x
© 2012 Eastern Sociological Society
Additional Information
How to Cite
Brint, S., Proctor, K., Murphy, S. P. and Hanneman, R. A. (2012), The Market Model and the Growth and Decline of Academic Fields in U.S. Four-Year Colleges and Universities, 1980–2000. Sociological Forum, 27: 275–299. doi: 10.1111/j.1573-7861.2012.01318.x
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The research presented in this article was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Atlantic Philanthropies. We thank Reina Mulkai of the Foundation Center and Melissa Brown of the Center for Philanthropy for assistance with donor data. We thank Jacob Apkarian, Richard Niemeyer, and Lori Turk-Bicakci for coding and research assistance. The senior author presented versions of this article at seminars at the Department of Sociology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Higher Education Institute at the University of Georgia, the Department of Sociology at the University of California at Irvine, the School of Public Policy at UCLA, and the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. We thank colleagues at these institutions for comments that improved the quality of the article. We also thank the anonymous reviewers at Sociological Forum for comments that improved the quality of this article.
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Office of the Vice Provost, University of California at Riverside, 321 Surge, Riverside, California 92521; e-mail: steven.brint@ucr.edu.
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Center for Education Policy Analysis, Stanford University, 520 Galvez Mall, CERAS Building, Fifth Floor, Stanford, California 94305-3084.
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Alliance for Applied Research in Education and Anthropology (AAREA), Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida, 4202 East Fowler Avenue, SOC 107, Tampa, Florida 33620.
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Department of Sociology, University of California, Riverside, 1206 Watkins Hall, Riverside, California 92521.
Publication History
- Issue published online: 30 MAY 2012
- Article first published online: 30 MAY 2012
Keywords:
- academic fields;
- curricular change;
- education;
- market signals;
- organizational logic;
- social change
Conventional sociological accounts of the rise and fall of academic fields have been challenged by accounts based on the idea of market-responsive change. In this article, we focus on the period 1980–2000, the period during which, according to its proponents, the market model of change became dominant in academe. We find changes in the student market to be strongly associated with increased institutionalization of academic fields. We also find the preferences of donors to be associated with increased institutionalization of academic fields. By contrast, we find relatively little support for labor market signals or changes in federal funding priorities as important influences on the institutionalization of academic fields. We find that higher-status institutions are more market responsive than lower-status institutions.