The origins and evolution of academic drift at the California State University, 1960-2005

Academic drift has been a central concept in the study of higher education for the past half-century, with higher education scholarship locating the phenomenon in fieldwide status competition dynamics stemming from the postwar massification and neoliberalization of higher education. In this paper, I explore the origins and evolution of academic drift at the California State University (CSU) system between 1960 and 2005, finding that its name change from college to university and pursuit of doctoral-level education had endogenous origins grounded not in status competition but rather in a desire to repair an organizational identity breach with field stakeholders. This case suggests that organizational activities that look like they are in the pursuit of prestige may not in fact be grounded in prestige dynamics and that academic drift may be less inevitable and hegemonic than currently portrayed in the literature. Together, these findings advance understanding of a core phenomenon of interest to higher education scholarship.