ABSTRACT
By the end of the nineteenth century, American academics en masse found that external arm in the learned society or disciplinary association, a form at once specialized in scope and national in membership and orientation. Disciplinary associations multiply as fast as specialties develop; they have also begun to reflect the division of academics among institutional sectors. Institutionally tied associations are exemplified and semiofficially capped by the American Council on Education (ACE), a presidents club established in 1918 at the same time as the National Research Council (NRC) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). The academicians are particularly strong in science councils, penetrating by means of peer review the ordinary routines of such major agencies as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Natural conflict between administrator and faculty associations is exemplified in arguments over the size of institutional overhead in the budgeting of federal research grants.
