Financial Adversity, Internal Competition, and Curriculum Change in a University

December 1978, volume 23 Records at Stanford University were used to explore the relation between changes in the curriculum and financial adversity. Two hypotheses were derived from a model of universities as adaptive organizations with departments competing for resources. To test the hypotheses, changes in eight attributes of the curriculum were studied. The data show that university curriculum responded to changes in financial conditions and that departments of stronger research reputation were less responsive than departments of weaker reputation.