The Academic Revolution

by Christopher Jencks, David Riesman

Harvard scholars Jencks (social policy) and Riesman (sociology) loosed their 1968 sociological and historical analysis of American higher education into a world where revolution was the order of the day. They argue that the rise of the academic professional played an important role in expanding demand for higher education. Jencks contributes a new introduction, The original publisher was Doubleday. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Genres: Education

580 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Christopher Sandy Jencks was an American social scientist.

Reviews

[Joseph Wycoff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jencks is irrelevant, but David Riesman was a player in the great American contest over higher education during in the late twentieth century. An important point, for graduate students -- as the number of review here indicates nobody else is compelled to read this dense work -- is that Riesman wrote a comprehensive critique of Thorstein Veblen's works, including Veblen's insightful text on _The Higher Learning in America (1918)_. A sociologist by training and elitist by disposition, Riesman joined the conservative resistance to New Deal policy and to the democratization of higher education during the 1950s and 1960s. Well-versed in Veblenian scholarship due to his prior research, he understood the fundamental distinction between faculty and schoolmasters in academia. Most would regard him as a member of faculty, but his allegiance was to the schoolmasters. His treatise on an "academic revolution " is decidedly an ideological blueprint for schoolmasters' ascendancy to power. Why? Why would a faculty member of an authentic academic discipline favor the schoolmasters of rump fields of study? More than likely, he opposed the democratization of higher education in the University of California System, as his back and forth with Clark Kerr suggests. Yet, he was a careful writer, not entirely or explicitly racist like so many other higher education scholars in his time. Riesman's co-authored work on a supposed academic revolution, nonetheless, survives to entice future faculty to exercise "academic power" and control the "worldly wisdom" conferred upon the student-pupils of higher education in 21st century America.