ABSTRACT
Professionals tend to view their vocations as utterly incomparable with work in factories or government offices, and they may not even use the same language when speaking of their occupations and of others. The administrative structure of American academic institutions is analyzed from the perspective of these results of previous research and the theoretical inferences drawn from them. The index of the formally instituted academic division of labor is the number of departments. Horizontal differentiation into the major academic subunits, corresponding to the major divisions with different functions in government bureaus, is indicated by the number of schools and colleges in an institution. Vertical differentiation in the hierarchy is measured by the number of administrative levels, counting all faculty except chairmen as the lowest and the president as the highest level. The administrative use of computers is reflected in a multilevel hierarchy in academic institutions, resembling its effect in government bureaus.
