"Higher education is becoming destabilized in the face of extraordinarily rapid change. The composition of the academy's most valuable asset - the faculty - and the essential nature of faculty work are being transformed." "At the heart of that transformation, but largely invisible, has been a restructuring of academic appointments, academic work, and academic careers - a reconfiguring widely decried but heretofore inadequately described. This volume depicts the scope and depth of the transformation, combing empirical data drawn from three decades of national higher education surveys. The authors' portrait, at once startling and disturbing, provides the context for interpreting these developments as part of a larger structural evolution of the national higher education system. Schuster and Finkelstein outline the stakes for the nation and the challenging work to be done."--Jacket.