Canadian Journal of Higher Education, Vol. XX-3 1990 La revue canadienne d'enseignement supérieur. Vol. XX-3 1990 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus Academic Labor Markets and Careers. Edited by David W. Breneman and Ted I.K. Youn. New York: The Falmer Press, 1988, pp. vii, 220. Price: U.S. $17.00. Reviewed by Frederick T. Evers, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph. This book is part of the Stanford Series on Education and Public Policy (Henry M. Levin, general editor). It consists of a brief introduction by the editors, an historical review by Youn, eight chapters reporting research results, and a concluding chapter by Breneman. The editors indicate that the focus of the book is to investigate academic labor markets and careers by bringing together human capital theory from economics with stratification theory from sociology. As is the case with most edited works, the chapters are inconsistent in terms of their specificity to the topic. Overall, I found the quality high and the range of topics kept me interested. The historical review by Youn (a sociologist) is very useful in that it summarizes five perspectives that he feels can be used to organize the research on academic careers and academic markets. The five categories are: (1) fixed-coefficient model, (2) human capital theory, (3) screening model, (4) institutional ascription model, and (5) structural perspectives on careers and market. Although this classification and the works assigned to each category could prompt a debate, the interdisciplinary and focused nature of the review serves as a good grounding for the research chapters that follow. Chapter 2 by Robert McGinnis and J. Scott Long (sociologists) is a review of their work on "patterns of institutional stratification and their effects on the careers of scientists who are affiliated with the institutions" (p. 28) and an extension of their research to include measures of geographic and ecological differentiation. Based on a sample of 239 male biochemists who received their Ph.D.s from U.S. universities by 1957, 1958, 1962, and 1963, they conclude that "stratification in science is an important force that influences not only entry into careers - in other sectors as well as academia - but also subsequent outcomes, especially productivity" (p. 48). Thus they argue that they have established a causal link between structural (prestige of Ph.D. granting institution) and micro variables (faculty appointment). Furthermore, they conclude that in the United States stratification operates "at best independently of and at worst quite contrary to the principle of meritocracy" (p. 48). It is possible to question the ability to make such a broad generalization based on the data in this analysis, but the pervasiveness of this pattern in academic and other complex organizations lends a great deal of external validity to the findings. The third chapter, by Ted I.K. Youn and Daniel Zelterman, looks at the effect of organization attributes on academic career 104 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus mobility. Their log-linear analysis is based on a 1975 sample of 3,400 academics from 2,406 institutions (from the Survey of the American Professoriate by Ladd and Lipset). The institutions where the respondents acquired jobs are ranked as (1) leading research university, (2) research and doctoral-granting university, (3) four-year college, and (4) two-year college. Along the same line as McGinnis and Long, they conclude that a relationship exists between doctoral origin and academic career. The conclusions of Youn and Zelterman extend the linkage from entrance into career outcomes and differentiate patterns of mobility across academic fields. Rachel A. Rosenfeld and Jo Ann Jones (sociologists) examine exit from and re-entry into higher education in Chapter 4. Using a sample of 311 females and 311 males from the 1981 directory of the American Psychological Association supplemented with citation searches, they are able to determine that type of position held (tenure vs. non-tenure, part-time vs. full-time) affects career mobility. They also argue that the relationship must be examined within the context of the prevailing labor market. Chapter 5 deals specifically with the part-time labor market and part-time careers in academia. Although the conclusions that Howard P. Tuckerman and Karen L. Pickerill (economists) make are not surprising, e.g., "part-time academic employment rarely gives rise to an academic career" (p. 109), the profile of part-timers is interesting. In academe the majority of part-time faculty are males (60% in 1983), the ratio of part-timers to all faculty is gradually increasing in the U.S., the rate of increase is greater for women than men, and part-timers represent a larger proportion of female faculty than of male faculty (45% vs. 31% in 1983). W. Lee Hansen, a professor of economics and industrial relations, examines merit pay in higher education in Chapter 6. He concludes that institutions with "collective bargaining agreements allocate a relatively small proportion of their salary increase funds for merit" (p. 132). For those without collective bargaining, the weight given to merit is larger in institutions that emphasize research than those that emphasize teaching. This finding relates to the extension of merit pay to elementary and secondary schools. Hansen feels that if K-12 grade teachers, who are largely unionized, adopt the model of institutions with collective bargaining agreements, then it is not likely that merit pay will be applied to elementary and secondary levels. The issue of pay is also raised in Chapter 7 where economist Debra Barbezat examines gender differences in academia. Of all the issues covered in this book, discriminatory pay differentials is probably the most extensively studied. Barbezat's chapter, a revised version of an article in Population Research and Policy Review, presents an excellent overview to the issue and a careful analysis of data for 1968, 1975, and 1977. During that period she finds that salary differentials decreased substantially for males versus females but that females still received lower salaries (with or without controlling for variables such as scholarly productivity, experience, academic field, and employing institution). By employing separate regression models for females and males she is able to make specific conclusions, e.g., there is no support for the 105 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus belief that the "rise in women's earnings is primarily due to an improvement in women's characteristics relative to men, rather than a reduction in discrimination" (p. 158). The findings indicate that the characteristics of both men and women improved from 1968 to 1977 and that the decrease in the salary differential was due to a decrease in discriminatory practices. Although there are still inequities, Barbezat feels that there is reason to be optimistic about the effect of federal legislation in the U.S. to provide equal employment opportunities. The eighth chapter is a brief discussion of university scientists moonlighting as entrepreneurs by Maurice N. Richter, Jr. (reprinted from Society). Richter's reported estimate of 3.3% of scientists and engineers who are full-time faculty members working as consultants seems low. I agree that very little research has been done on this aspect of universities and that it is an interesting area for career analyses, but the practice seems so much more widespread and accepted than Richter implies. In Canada business schools encourage their faculty to consult for the experience and, it is argued, to supplement the inadequate salaries that universities provide. Medical and law faculties typically include a large proportion of practitioners. Chapter 9, reprinted from the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization is an interesting investigation of the economics of tenure. Michael S. McPherson and Gordon C. Winston argue that given the structure of academic employment, tenure is quite a logical response. Since individuals are hired into very specific occupations in academe there is little flexibility to relocate them within the organization. Companies have much more flexibility in this regard, they can promote, laterally move, and retrain individuals. "The central message of this paper can be summed up as follows: the institution of tenure is not simply a constraint imposed on universities, whether to protect faculty jobs or to ensure academic freedom, but an integral part of the way universities function. The tenure/promotion system is a reasonable response to the highly specialized nature of academic work and to the long training such work requires" (p. 194). Consistent with the editors' focus, the research chapters do take a structural, rather than micro, approach to issues revolving around academic jobs but, as Breneman points out (p. 200), the integration of human capital and status attainment perspectives is not achieved since the chapters were not co-authored by economists and sociologists. I would also attribute the lack of integration to the state-of-the-art of theory in this area. However, based on my reading of this book, I realize that this is a fruitful area that will lead to a better understanding of occupations and organizations. In his concluding chapter, Breneman indicates that secondarily he and his co-editor "hoped to increase our knowledge of how academic labor markets function, with particular reference to the nature of academic careers over time" (p. 200). He feels that they achieved this objective. I agree. By assembling eight chapters by economists and sociologists that each deal with a different issue relevant to the theme, they have shown the promise of this line of inquiry. A final note: this is a reader for researchers and administrators in academia. The variability of the statistical sophistication of the analyses would be problematic for 106 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus all but advanced students and, possibly, for some of us who are no longer students. However, even in the chapters using complex techniques, such as Youn and Zelterman's log-linear modelling, the authors carefully itemize the results. So, as long as the reader is prepared to accept the author's interpretations, this is not an insurmountable problem. I was extremely impressed with Barbezat's presentation of her dummy regression results - even the discussion of Oaxaca decompositions is decipherable! Robin S. Harris, English Studies at Toronto: A History, with a foreword by H. Northrop Frye. Toronto: Governing Council, University of Toronto, 1988. xvi, 310 pp. ISBN 0-7727-7400-5. ($25.00 Canadian). Reviewed by Alexander Globe, Department of English, University of British Columbia During the past forty years, the arts have burgeoned in Canada. To choose only one example, Ontario's many summer festivals have achieved mixtures of fun and sophistication inconceivable before the fifties. The substantial increase in university education during the sixties created new audiences, and often an English elective has whetted a lifelong taste. Even politicians have had to reckon with the economic impact. Harris's subject, then, is far from esoteric, but the bibliography on pp. 307-10 illustrates a problem. While serious book length studies exist concerning the cultural impact of English studies in Britain and the U.S., nothing of the sort has been attempted for English Canada. Over half of Harris's sources for this country are article-length memoirs. English Studies at Toronto opens an important area for a Canadian academic community that has been remarkably uninterested in its own history. The book presents an official institutional record, focussing on one department and keeping close to the professional facts of personnel, syllabi and the like. Once we have more factual accounts as meticulous as this, then the larger cultural questions will emerge more clearly. By 1985, Toronto's 492 doctorates in English accounted for 40% of all those awarded in Canada (p. 291). The long appendix on pp. 241-86 listing Ph.D.'s in English and their subsequent careers shows how pervasive the department's influence has been. Universities across the country have been enriched by its graduates, several of whom have become department heads, deans, vicepresidents and even presidents (p. 189). One of Canada's oldest universities, King's College was founded in 1843, then secularized in 1850 as the University of Toronto, with a total of fifty students. The English Department formed part of University College. By the first world war, three other universities with separate English departments federated with Toronto: Methodist Victoria in 1892, Anglican Trinity in 1904 and Catholic St. Michael's in 1912. To accommodate larger enrolments in smaller settings, secular additions were made in the 1960's: New and Innis Colleges on the main campus, then branch colleges at Scarborough and Erindale. In 1975, the six separate departments on the main campus were combined with Erindale into one administrative unit.