The paradoxical state of academe's attempt to crowd individuals into institutions of higher education at a time when jobs for them are evaporating has created a conflict within the academic personnel community for non-tenured faculty struggling to survive. Case studies representing actual experiences of some individuals directly involved in the dilemma are examined. It is suggested that the result of the over-supply of academic personnel is the abuse of graduate students under the conflicting pressures of credentialism, professionalism, and education, the conflicting pressures of teaching and professionalism on the younger staff members, the massive assault on the tenure system, and the pressure to publish or perish. It is concluded that a quasi-closed elite has emerged at the top with a permanent underprivileged stratum of untouchables at the bottom. Six case studies examining tenure, layoffs, professional power politics, and due process are presented in the Introduction. Authors include Arthur S. Wilke, B. Eugene Griessman, Paul Blumberg, Don Martindale, Sil Dong Kim, Lee Krueger, and Harvey R. Cain. In Part One, The Rocky Road to Tenure: Profiles in the Hidden Professoriate, Fran French, Alfredo Mirande, Wilke, and Norman S. Goldner examine the changing rules and abuses within tenure policies. In Part Two, Consequences of the Tenure Crisis, various results of several confrontations with tenure policy are discussed by French, Constance A. Sullivan, Joseph A. Pilgrim, and Barbara Jean Wilke. Tables provide such information as: projected openings for and new supply of Ph.D.'s, 1974-85; birth rate per 1,000 U.S. women, age 15-44, 1940-73; distribution of persons with Ph.D. and M.A. degrees by primary employment; projected faculty openings; and degrees granted in sociology, 1950-74. An index is provided. (LC)