ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a wide-ranging analysis of the academic labor market. The American faculty is a corps of nearly 700,000 educated persons. Each year, even when higher education is depressed, thousands of people enter the academic profession, and even in prosperous years thousands leave it. The flow of these people into and out of the profession largely determines the caliber of the professoriate as defined by such qualities as intelligence, breadth and depth of learning, creativity, motivation, social responsibility, concern for students, and personal integrity. The chapter traces these flows with special attention to the sources from which academic people are drawn and to the destinations of those who leave. This subject is of great importance because, over the next twenty-five years, our colleges and universities will probably require nearly as many faculty appointments as there are members of the professoriate today.
