ABSTRACT
Seldom do teachers, scholars, and scientists write autobiographical documents that are candid statements about themselves as human beings. To discover the basic problems of the academic profession it was found useful to employ a number of analytical devices. One of these was the scheme of treating the university as a social system designed to achieve certain ends for which various means may be employed. Sources of tension in the whole structure also are brought to light in the contrast often existing between nominal and real means and ends, or professed aims and actual practices. Throughout the treatment of forms and functions the authors have focused attention upon personnel problems. Personnel problems are typically dealt with by administrators in an ad hoc manner. The authors' point of view has been that of the participant-observer, a position that obviously makes impossible a completely detached perspective. Their thesis is that the human coefficient of intellectual activity is of the utmost importance.
