About

As a sociologist of higher education, Dr. Patricia J. Gumport has focused her research and teaching on key changes in the academic landscape and organizational character of American higher education. She has studied the dynamics of academic change across and within different types of colleges and universities, illuminating what facilitates or impedes change. Extending core concerns in the sociology of knowledge and institutional theory, she has analyzed how organizational, intellectual, political, economic, and professional interests redefine the content, structure, and legitimacy of academic fields. Her specific studies include the emergence and institutionalization of interdisciplinary fields, graduate education and professional socialization, organizational restructuring, the ascendance of industry logic in public higher education, and forces that promote or inhibit academic collaboration. Her research within the United States and Europe examines how universities that are ostensibly competitors determine when and how to collaborate, with implications for academic leaders pursuing strategic initiatives, managing environmental pressures, and leadership development. Dr. Gumport holds positions as a Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, with program affiliations in Higher Education and Sociology of Education, and her work emphasizes understanding organizational change and leadership within higher education institutions.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Medicine
• Engineering ethics
• Sociology
• Engineering
• Computer Science
• Medical education
• Pedagogy
• Library science
• Mathematics education
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Graduate Education and Organized Research in the United States

  University of California Press eBooks · 2023 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  PublisherDOI

• Graduate Education and Research Imperatives:

  University of California Press eBooks · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Engineering ethics
  PublisherDOI

• Contributors

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2023

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  DOI

• Academic Fault Lines

  Johns Hopkins University Press eBooks · 2019-01-01 · 24 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Academic Fault Lines: The Rise of Industry Logic in Public Higher Education

  Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University) · 2019-07-16 · 8 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Public Universities as Academic Workplaces

  2017-11-30 · 49 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Public universities have long been central to the success of the national higher-education enterprise, pursuing distinctive missions while responding to changing societal expectations to expand and diversify their functions. Sponsored research altered the very structures and mission of public universities, nurturing a growing interdependence between research, graduate education, and undergraduate education. State and campus leaders became aware of the enormous revenues needed to support the huge institutional structures that had emerged—funding for research, for instrumentation and facilities, and for financial assistance to students. As public universities respond to the contemporary economic and political challenges, changes in institutional practices directly alter the expectations of faculty work. In some public universities, teaching loads have been increased, small graduate programs have been closed, and faculty have been told not to spend too much time with graduate students. As public universities have been pressured to become more like businesses, university managers have become the major reshapers of the academic workplace.

  PublisherDOI

• 19. Higher Education: Evolving Forms and Emerging Markets

  Yale University Press eBooks · 2017-12-31 · 6 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges. Fourth Edition.

  2016-02-01 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  Publisher

• Research Priorities for Redirecting American Higher Education

  International Higher Education · 2015-03-25 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  International Higher Education (IHE) publishes insightful, informed, and high-quality commentary and analysis on trends and issues of importance to higher education systems, institutions, and stakeholders around the world.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sociology of Higher Education

  Johns Hopkins University Press eBooks · 2007-01-01 · 81 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Michael N. Bastedo

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  28 shared

• Philip G. Altbach

  27 shared

• Maria Yudkevich

  25 shared

• Brian Pusser

  University of Virginia

  3 shared

• Stuart K. Snydman

  3 shared

• Robert Zemsky

  2 shared

• Marc Chun

  Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (United States)

  2 shared

• Robert O. Berdahl

  1 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Higher Education

  Stanford University

• M.S., Sociology of Education

  Stanford University