The proposal, ?What ever happened to the faculty? is one component of a EUROCORES research collaborative with colleagues in five European countries and Japan (?Change in Networks, Higher Education, and Knowledge Societies? CINHEKS). CINHEKS addresses higher education?s role in knowledge transfer in different regional, national, and institutional contexts, analyzing the intersections of universities with the private sector economy and the attendant effects on the structure of academic employment, and how globally higher education systems are being modeled on the entrepreneurial American research university. The USA project explores two empirical questions: (1) To what extent and how are faculty members featured in public policy as intellectual capital, as key players in educating students (human capital) and in knowledge transfer generally?; & (2) To what extent will the confluence of an economic recession and a new political administration lead to the ascendance of a distinctive knowledge/learning regime, versus to a modification but continuation of what has been termed ?academic capitalism?? The data consist of archival/document analysis of current and emergent policy texts and statements in: (a) federal and state policy networks; & (b) in institutional and professional networks of six global and regional universities (and of managers, academics, and other professions that work in but have networks beyond them).