The social pathology of a university department

The underlying premise of the research is that the social structure of university departments heavily determines the university experience of their members. There have, however, been very few empirically based investigations of the overall social structure of a university department. A study was conducted of the English Department of the Free University, Berlin. It combined three sets of considerations: 1. socio-historical 2. from role theory 3. from the sociology of organisations. Against an assessment of the socio-historical constraints on the University, the academic discipline and the Department, the situation of the main status groups in the Department was examined - from freshmen to professors - but also populations which were just entering or had just left the Department, i. e. school leavers and recent graduates. A lattice of eighteen crosssectional and longitudinal surveys was used. The data collection was by questionnaire, interview, extensive on-site observation and documentary analysis. A set of organisational properties was applied to the findings to determine the institutional efficacy of the Department. On the strength of these operations the condition of the Department is diagnosed as pathological. Beyond illustration of the manifold symptoms, attention is drawn to the cleft between the hidden curriculum of the Department and the ostensible goals of academic effort. While conclusions are drawn about current developments in German universities, the case is seen as a demonstration of the threat of "departmentalism" in the university at large. Finally, a proposal is made suggesting the extension of institutional research in universities to help forestall the phenomena shown in the study