The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how certain personnel practices influence the ability of a university to achieve and maintain a desirable faculty rank distribution and new appointment rate when the faculty size is fixed. A mathematical model is formulated that relates faculty size, promotion rates, and tenure and nontenure lifetimes to the proportion in tenure and the annual appointment rate. Real data from the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University is used to analyze the effects of several different appointment, promotion and retirement policies in that School. Equilibrium results are obtained to indicate what would happen if a given set of policies were followed for a long period of time and all behavioral parameters were to remain fixed. In addition, a short-run analysis is performed to investigate the extent to which an undesirable faculty rank distribution can be changed over the next ten years under altenative personnel policies. (Author)