The academic profession, like many others, is rapidly being transformed. This book explores the current challenges to the profession and their broad implications for American higher education. Examining what professors do and how academia is changing, contributors to this volume assess current and potential threats to the profession. Leading scholars in sociology and higher education explore such topics as structural and cognitive change, socialization and deviance, career development, and professional autonomy and regulation. A comprehensive analysis of the significant questions facing this crucial profession, "The American Academic Profession" will be welcomed by students and scholars as well as by administrators and policy makers concerned with the future of the academy. (Contains 3 line drawings.)