Robert Burton Clark, UCLA Professor Emeritus of Higher Education and Sociology, was one of the first sociologists to study higher education from a global perspective. His research interests include comparative higher education, development of graduate schools, entrepreneurial universities, and sustaining change in universities. Materials include transcripts of presentations, speeches and lectures as well as conference files, research files, publications, reprints, and alphabetical files of correspondence.

Burton “Bob” Clark earned his Ph.D. in Sociology at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1954. Clark was the first incumbent of the Allan M. Cartter Professorship and served in that post until his formal retirement as Professor Emeritus of Higher Education and Sociology, UCLA. During his career, he taught at five American research universities in departments of sociology and graduate schools of education: Stanford University (Sociology, 1953-1956); Harvard University (Education, 1956-1958); UC Berkeley (Education, 1958-1966); Yale University (Sociology, 1966-1980); and UCLA (Education, 1980-1991). Clark was one of the first sociologists to study higher education from a global perspective. His research interests include comparative higher education, development of graduate schools, entrepreneurial universities, and sustaining change in universities. Clark’s cross-national research laid the foundation for his landmark book, Creating Entrepreneurial Universities: Organizational Pathways of Transformation (1998). Clark’s numerous publications also include The Open Door College (1960), The Distinctive College (1970), Academic Power in Italy (1977), The Academic Life: Small Worlds, Different Worlds (1987), and Places of Inquiry, Research and Advanced Education in Modern Universities (1995). In 1989 he was elected fellow of the British Society for Research into Higher Education and became a Distinguished Member of the European Association for Institutional Research in 1997. The following year he received the Comenius Medal from UNESCO and was awarded honorary doctoral degrees from the universities of Strathclyde (1998) and Turku (2000). Clark died on October 28, 2009.

5.5 linear ft. (1 document box and 5 record storage cartons.)

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