Nearly 1 million full-and part-time faculty members teach at some 3,400 colleges and universities in the United States. At some point, all of these faculty members have participated in the academic labor market as a buyer or a seller. Social scientists often characterize the higher education market as inefficient and idiosyncratic. Yet conventional rules governing terms of exchange are inappropriate and unworkable in academia. This article examines the structure of the U.S. higher education market and explores how major shifts in it over the past half century have increased inequality and stratification among faculty members and institutions. (Contains 1 endnote.)