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Book Prospectus
The Composition of University Knowledge: Changes in Faculty Makeup over Time
By David John Frank and Jay Gabler
FORWARD BY JOHN W. MEYER
CHAPTER 1. CRISIS IN THE UNIVERSITIES
The contemporary discourse on universities contains a broad sense of crisis over changes in the body of
university knowledge – the decline of the classics, the unbridling of economics, the births of many
engineerings, and so on (e.g., Bloom 1987; Readings 1996). Given the widespread lamentation, one might
expect to find careful empirical investigations of composition and change – of expansion and contraction in
the branches of learning and disciplinary fields over time. But one’s expectations would be disappointed.
There are compelling anecdotes and illustrations, to be sure, as well as histories of particular departments
and fields (e.g., Bender and Schorske, Abbott). But there are no systematic empirical overviews, at least in
terms of the overall body of university knowledge.
There is a practical reason for the combined polemical intensity and investigatory torpor. The
teaching and research emphases of universities are centrally related to our notions of modern society and
social progress – the university is the main repository of public knowledge – which opens the door to all
manner of criticism. Yet basic indicators of composition and change are difficult to assemble. The obvious
sources of data – on enrollment patterns, say, or funding streams – are not easy to gather beyond the case
level. Taking a stab at this empirical project is the first main agenda of our book. For universities around
the world we seek to document composition and change in the body of university knowledge over the
twentieth century, using data on the makeup of faculties for a worldwide sample of universities (the
proportional representation of chemists, say, and linguists). . 1
Beyond this first agenda – to present basic data on faculty makeup over time – we pursue a second
one. Corresponding to the empirical silence on the teaching and research emphases of universities is a
theoretical one. What causes the body of university knowledge to change over time? We wish to advance
an argument in answer to this question. As suggested, the existing literature directly addressing the topic is
thin. The meso-level investigations that have dominated the field contain useful ideas but aim at narrower
questions than the one posed here.
The existing literature falls into two broad camps. One camp treats the body of knowledge as a
closed system (Scott), the internal logics of which generate change. These internal logics include (a) the
quest for scientific truth, whereby changes in the body of university knowledge follow from breakthroughs
in true knowledge of the real world, (b) differentiation, whereby changes arise from career pressures
necessitating specialization and novelty (Collins), (c) fractal differentiation, whereby changes in teaching
and research emphases occur cyclically through the discarding and rediscovery of old ideas (Abbott), and
(d) much sociology of science, whereby changes are channeled through the social organization of the
knowledge production system (Latour, Knorr-Cetina). Such closed-system arguments, while useful to
understanding some kinds of phenomena, do not lend themselves to explaining the large-scale, long-term
shifts we observe and analyze in the book (differentiation, e.g., does a good job anticipating change but not
directional change in the body of knowledge).
A second camp in the literature treats the body of knowledge as an open system, external forces on
which promote transformation. These external forces include (a) the changing needs of society, such as
economic development (Clark), (b) the changing demands of constituents, such as students (Altbach), and
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The data come from three university faculty directories, the Index Generalis (Montessus de Ballore 19191955), the Commonwealth Universities Yearbook (Association of Commonwealth Universities 19141995), and the World Guide to Universities (19xx), all of which list faculty by their disciplinary fields (for
example, Art: Ottoboni, Davis, Lo). We use these lists to determine for each university in our sample the
proportion of faculty in each branch of learning and disciplinary field: e.g., the number of philosophers
over the number of total university faculty. We then average the ratios across university cases to come up
with the average proportions presented in the bookFaculty makeup is an imperfect measure of composition
and change in the body of knowledge. Among other deficits, it makes the flawed assumption that each
faculty member is equal to every other in contributing to teaching and research output across fields and
countries. In counterweight, it is available across space and time, and it clearly offers one indicator of
overall teaching and research emphases.
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(c) the changing interests of the powerful, such as state officials (Apple). These arguments are better able
than their closed-system counterparts to make sense of the broadly patterned trends in faculty composition
we observe, and to some extent we ally ourselves with them. But we treat them as identifying mechanisms
of change more than offering final explanations. Their emphases on functions and interests strongly differ
from our own. After all, if students, say, across universities and nation-states demand more attention to a
certain field of study, what is the broader force that impels them to do so?
Fundamentally, we argue that the body of university knowledge embodies public and authoritative
conceptions of “reality,” especially that species of reality that is global and institutionalized rather than
private, secret, local, or contingent (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Meyer et al. 1987). The principal realms
of globally institutionalized reality found the major branches of learning – nature/the natural sciences,
culture/the humanities, and society/the social sciences. The primary constituents within each realm – e.g.,
the state and the market in society – found the major disciplinary fields – political science and economics.
Changes in globally institutionalized reality produce changes in the body of university knowledge.
This process, to be specific, works first and mainly through alterations in the substance of what
should be known. This involves changes in the direct objects of university inquiry through the rises and
falls of meaningful entities and relationships. Secularization, for instance, substantially lowers the stakes
for knowledge of God and thus generates substantially decreased attention to such fields as theology.
Accompanying alterations in the substance of what should be known stand alterations in the character of
knowledge thought best able to discern reality (be it values or facts, inert or dynamic) and by redesignating
the most proper methods used in the attainment of knowledge (intuitions or demonstrations, contemplations
or investigations).
The major branches of learning, and the disciplinary fields within them, arise on these
foundations, i.e., on the substance and character of and methods appropriate for ascertaining “reality.” The
process proceeds via such mechanisms as described above – changing societal needs, constituent demands,
and powerful interests.
Developing and building support for this argument is our second main agenda in the book. We
pursue it in five substantive chapters. The first deals with shifts among the main branches of learning (the
humanities, social sciences, natural sciences). The next three deal with shifts among the disciplinary fields
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within each branch of learning. And then the fifth chapter zeroes in on shifts in emphases within a single
disciplinary field, history. Each substantive chapter begins with a brief introductory statement of the
particular problem at hand and a background summary of the specific literature on the problem. The
relevant empirical data follow. Then we discuss the observed trends in terms of our larger globalinstitutional argument. Subsequently, we suggest some mechanisms linking changes in global reality to
changes in the body of knowledge. And then finally we consider some variation within the global trends,
especially between nation-states, by comparing our world-level results with illustrative data from
universities in the United States.
CHAPTER 2. SHIFTS AMONG THE MAIN BRANCHES OF LEARNING
The first substantive chapter deals with shifts in emphases among the main branches of learning – the
humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The main intellectual problem is to account for
the dramatic relative decline of the humanities, the flatter trend in the natural sciences, and the striking
relative rise of the social sciences as components of the body of university knowledge.
As suggested above, we hitch such changes to transformations in globally institutionalized reality,
in particular to a fundamental shift that began with the onset of modernity and grew over the twentieth
century in the basic conceptual apparatus used to understand human society and the larger universe in
which we live. Across multiple domains, static hierarchies have been supplanted by dynamic systems.
That which had been fixed in vertical (often sacred) orders – families, nations, the animal and plant
“kingdoms,” etc. – has been reconstituted into interactive and interdependent (largely mundane)
assemblies. Evidence of the shift appears across domains, in the rise of democratic polities, free-market
economies, and mass-education cultures, all of which assume much more dynamism (often called progress)
and systematicity (sometimes called equality) than their predecessor forms (Meyer et al.).
This transformation in the ontological structure of “reality” – with static sociocultural and natural
orders giving way to dynamic sociocultural and natural systems – changed both the substance and character
of what should be known of reality and also the methods for such knowledge’s proper attainment. The
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transformation caused a redistribution of the weightings accorded to the main branches of learning,
particularly the striking shift in teaching and research emphases from the humanities to the social sciences.
The process happened first through changes in the substance of what should be known.
Knowledge deemed essential to the definition of static vertical orders, on the legitimating bases of
differentiation and hierarchy, receded from focus. And knowledge more pertinent to dynamic integrated
systems, of common and interdependent relations, grew more central. The change drew emphases away
from the humanities and gave it to the social sciences. The distinguishing marks of human culture that are
the stock in trade of the humanities – the celebration of that which separates humans from beasts, that
which distinguishes great men from common – lost meaning in the new reality. And simultaneously the
properties and processes of human social systems as wholes – their vital functions, their everyday
pragmatics – gained salience.
The same broad shift in globally institutionalized reality also changed the essential character of
knowledge to be attained. The delegitimation of fixed hierarchies undermined the centrality of inert values,
which normatively define unchanging orders. In their place arose dynamic facts, designating the processes
that interlink parts of the evolving assembly. This change drew further strength away from the humanities
(centrally organized around enduring values) and shifted it to the social and natural sciences (more oriented
on active facts).
With the same ontological transformation came a shift in the methods by which knowledge was
thought best attained. Knowledge of sacred orders required contemplation and intuition, revelation and
sometimes genius. By contrast, knowledge of mundane systems required empirical investigation and
cognition, demonstration and application (White, Abbott). The latter methods are crucially distinguished
from the former by their accessibility: they produce demonstrable truths, which may be repetitively
experienced firsthand by all (McEneaney). This shift, as the previous one, transferred focus from the
humanities to the sciences.
It is these changes in the substance, character, and methods of discerning reality that caused the
observed changes in faculty makeup. They operate through such mechanisms as needs, demands,
functions, and interests.
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Empirically then, our main contribution in this chapter is to document the century-long fall of the
humanities relative to the social sciences in the body of university knowledge. Theoretically, our
contribution is to suggest why this occurred: an ongoing shift in the ontological structure, away from static
hierarchies and towards dynamic systems. We develop both of these contributions in the chapters that
follow, by looking at the disciplinary fields within each branch of learning.
CHAPTER 3. SHIFTS AMONG THE HUMANITIES
Chapter 3 hones in on the humanities, focusing on changes in the overall emphases given to its main
disciplinary fields. While all humanities fields decline in proportional representation over the twentieth
century, some fields (art, modern Western language and literature, philology and linguistics, history,
modern non-Western language and literature) fare much better than others (classics and archaeology,
philosophy, theology). This variation is the core intellectual problem to be solved.
Our explanation builds on our more general argument. In substance, character, and method, the
humanities generally embody knowledge that is ill-fitted to the prevailing global-institutional environment
of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, some humanities fields prove better adapted (and more adaptable)
than others.
The basic subject matter of the humanities is culture, with that term used in its nineteenth-century
sense to indicate the particular virtues of humanity, and especially humanity’s putatively unique capacities
to produce and sustain civilization (Elias?). Civilization is distinct from and in some ways opposite to
savagery, which embodies the base, natural, or animal aspects of humanity. Thus the study of the
humanities is the study of that which is good and beautiful, that which reveals our position in the hierarchy
of beings closest to God, which shows us to be capable of great literature and art and language. The subject
matter is strongly committed to hierarchical orders – virtue over instinct, the sublime over the common, the
celestial over the mundane. The character of humanities knowledge is oriented on enduring values more
than active facts. And humanities methods privilege the intuition and revelation of genius over the
cognition and investigation of common individuals. Along all three of these dimensions (the substance,
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character, and methods appropriate for ascertaining reality) the humanities are misalgined with rising
global institutions. Thus we observe the broad decline in the humanities seen in the previous chapter.
But some humanities fields – namely art, modern Western language and literature, philology and
linguistics, history, modern non-Western language and literature – are better able than others to adapt to the
modern assertion of integrated systems. One adaptation occurs in subject matter, in changes to the direct
objects of humanities inquiry. This happens, for example in history, by extending the gaze of the
humanities to more kinds of people – by national origin, race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and so on –
such that the focus on the Western male elite declines (e.g., Frank et al.). It also happens by opening the
humanities to more kinds of cultural matter – so as to regard not only the language and art of the well
placed and born but the language and art of all people everywhere. The same basic adaptation occurs when
the humanities move beyond the accomplishments of geniuses to the competence of everyday persons –
teaching not only not the appreciation of Haydn but the performance of Sousa, not only the understanding
of Milton but the composition of rudimentary haiku. In different ways, all these subject-matter changes
flout the older ordering hierarchies.
A second approach to revitalizing humanities fields – and aligning them with the global
institutions of the twentieth century – involves adaptations in the character of sought-after knowledge,
away from inert values (which increasingly become private matters, detached from public hierarchies) and
toward dynamic facts. With this, singular achievements become less salient than the everyday production
of culture; culture as distinguishing fact gives way to culture as routine process (and thus, e.g., literature
gets displaced by composition). And finally a third adaptation evident in the humanities involves shifts in
the methods used in attaining cultural knowledge – from those requiring insight or genius or divine
revelation to that requiring merely the systematic application of mundane, teachable skills (and thus, e.g.,
the study of language becomes increasingly scientific).
Adaptation, nevertheless, is easier said than done. Classics and archaeology, philosophy, and
theology – the least successful humanities over the twentieth century – all have “elective affinities”
(Abbott) to reality as a vertical order. In subject matter, for instance, the knowledge of the classics is by
definition the knowledge of a fixed hierarchy: the classics will only ever be the literature of dead white
male imperialists. In character, similarly, philosophical knowledge is difficult to detach from the inert
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values that have so long been the field’s mainstay. And in methods, along the same lines, theology strongly
resists scientization. These fields are fairly (though not entirely) inflexible, and they are poorly suited to a
global-institutional environment that celebrates dynamic human systems. The humanities fields that are
more able to adapt survive somewhat better over the twentieth century.
CHAPTER 4. SHIFTS AMONG THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
In Chapter 4, we turn our attention from the humanities to the social sciences. As in the previous chapter,
the intellectual problem is to explain variation. While all social-science fields experience proportional
growth over the twentieth century, the expansion rates of sociology and geography far outpace those of
political science, economics, anthropology, and psychology.
The basic subject matter of the social sciences is human society, explicitly conceived as a dynamic
system, amenable to rational management. It is precisely its commitments to dynamism (opening the
possibility of progress) and systematicity (raising the prospects of progress for the common good) that align
the social sciences so well with the global institutions of the modern period (Wallerstein). The character of
knowledge sought by social scientists – focused on functional processes – and the branch’s prevailing
scientific methodology also give this branch of learning a boost. For all three reasons, every social science
field gains ground over the twentieth century, raising its profile in the overall body of university
knowledge.
But two social science fields – sociology and geography – perform well above average among the
various disciplinary fields. We contend that this is partly the result of subject matter: to a greater extent
than the other social science fields, sociology and geography are disorderly sciences, by which we mean
fields that bring together that which had been kept apart in older vertical orders. Sociologists study the
entire social system at once – not just the states or the market, for example (Abbott). They are interested in
systems interrelations, especially when those interrelations contain delegitimated elements of verticality
(i.e., inequality). Geographers study the relationship between society and nature, two realms formerly
divided in institutionalized reality. They bridge the old chasm with work attentive to nature’s provisions
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for society (in terms of soil fertility, e.g.) and nature’s limitations on society (with environmental
degradation, e.g.).
As in substance, so in character too, sociology and geography have winning tendencies. Given
their emphases on the integration of systems, both focus strongly on functional processes – those dynamic
linkages that web together once separate parts. And in methods, both sociology and geography stand
among the more scientific of the social science fields.
For all three reasons, sociology and geography stand out among the social sciences. They prove
particularly well suited to the global-institutional environment of the twentieth century. At the other end of
the spectrum are anthropology and psychology, the least successful of the social-science fields. Both are
hindered mainly by their direct objects of inquiry. Anthropology, at its historical foundations, treats
hierarchy as given: the civilized over the savage. Psychology, in its focus on the individual, directs
attention away from the whole dynamic system to just one of its component parts (a part regarded as central
in Anglo Western settings but less so elsewhere [Frank et al. 1995]). Nevertheless it bears repeating, both
anthropology and psychology enjoy relative expansion in the overall body of university knowledge.
CHAPTER 5. SHIFTS AMONG THE NATURAL SCIENCES
Chapter 5 moves on to the third branch of learning, the natural sciences. The objective, as previously, is to
demonstrate and then explain variation in the trajectories of the various disciplinary fields, among which
astronomy, botany, zoology, and biology fare relatively poorly, while physics, chemistry, math, geology,
and biochemistry get along somewhat better.
The natural science’s basic subject matter is of course nature, a realm that in early modern
conceptualizations of reality stood separate from and even opposed to humanity, but one that over the
twentieth century came increasingly to be seen as encompassing humanity. In the ascendant view, nature
provides the essential life supports that give rise to and sustain human being (Frank 1997). Centrally this
shift in globally institutionalized reality involved a collapse of the old hierarchical order distinguishing
human from animal from plant life and then further from inorganic matter. Increasingly the fixed order of
nature (established, in many settings, by God) gave way to the interdependent systematicity of nature, in
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which elements relate not in a static chain of being (Lovejoy) but in a dynamic system of becoming.
Accompanying this flattening in the substance of nature came shifts in the methods by which nature is to be
known and the character of knowledge so produced. The more descriptive and contemplative methods
suited to knowing static orders – aimed at establishing precise facts and definitive typologies – lost
standing to more scientific and demonstrative methods suited to knowing dynamic systems – aimed at
identifying underlying processes and webs of interrelationship. As a general matter, these changes in
“reality” provided impetus for a minor expansion of the natural sciences in the university.
But not every field in the natural sciences benefited equally from the changing global-institutional
environment. Indeed many of the basic natural sciences declined in proportional representation, especially
astronomy, botany, zoology, and biology. These fields arose on older global-institutional foundations. In
subject matter, the least successful fields are all definitionally and historically tied to older categorical
orders distinguishing bounded realms of the universe (the heavens and the Earth, plant and animal life,
animate and inanimate matter) rather than overarching or underlying systems. The character of knowledge
sought after and produced in astronomy, botany, zoology, and biology is often typological, aimed at correct
description, more than it is processual, aimed at evolving principals. And the methods prevalent in these
natural sciences fields are often rooted more in contemplation and intuition than they are in active empirical
investigation.
All of this is not to say that these fields failed to change. As was true among the diminishing
humanities, the opposite is true: astronomy, botany, zoology, and biology all moved to embrace the new
dynamic-systems models of reality. But they remained in their constitutions tied to fixed order, such that
too much adaptation proved tantamount to crossing disciplinary boundaries (e.g., the botanist who over
adapts finds him- or herself an ecologist).
The other natural-sciences disciplines – physics, chemistry, mathematics, geology, and
biochemistry – are somewhat better suited to the times. They have more disorderly subject matter,
integrating that which had been apart; the knowledge they produce is more process oriented in character,
focused on the facts of functional interrelations; and their methods are generally more scientific, requiring
more active empirical demonstration. These fields change with the wider reality, too – chemistry, for
example, develops a whole new super-molecular level of study. But already in their constitutions they are
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more dynamic and systems oriented. In general, the natural sciences cease to be about contemplating
God’s orderly creation and instead come to be about investigating the mundane and evolving natural
system (McEneaney).
CHAPTER 6. SHIFTS IN HISTORY
Chapter 6 in the book moves down yet another level of analysis. Having observed changes among the
branches of learning and then within each branch of learning, we here zero in on a single disciplinary field,
history. In doing so, we replace proportions of faculty, used for data in the earlier chapters, with
proportions of courses. Our explanatory framework remains exactly the same: we tie changes in history to
changes in globally institutionalized reality. By moving down to the field level, we mean to demonstrate
the reach of our perspective. In parallel to previous chapters, our objective in this one is to explain change
in the composition of history – i.e., why some kinds of courses show a much decreased proportional
representation relative to others.
History in general offers rationalized origin stories of modern societies, usually conceived as
nation-states. What changes over the twentieth century is the conception of society. In line with the wider
ontological transformation, society becomes less hierarchical and fixed. Thus the attention of historians
moves from kings to people (Bendix), from the European core to the former peripheries, from the glorious
past to the functional present, and from discrete nation-states to wider regions and the world as a whole
(Frank et al. 1994; Frank et al. 2000). In substance, character, and methodology, history comes to embody
the new realities.
CHAPTER 7. CONCLUSION: THE UNIVERSITY AND SOCIETY
AUDIENCE, LENGTH, AND SCHEDULE
We intend to write the book for advanced undergraduates and above. It will be suitable for individuals and
courses in Science Studies Programs (in courses on the History of Science), in Schools of Education (in
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courses on Higher Education and on the Curriculum) and in Sociology Departments (in courses on the
Sociology of Education, the Sociology of Science, and the Sociology of Knowledge). We also expect the
book to have some popular audience, mostly from the wider university community and other education
professionals.
The main text will be approximately 200 pages, with a total of about 20 illustrations (figures and
tables). Both authors will be able to devote significant time to the project over the next year, and we fully
expect a draft of the book to be completed by the end of 2002.
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