Victim of Success: A Disciplinary Case Study

Higher education is traditionally organized along disciplinary lines, with departments and programs generally corresponding to individual disciplines. Like most entities, disciplines have their own life cycles, marked by periods of growth, changes in societal attention, and the waxing and waning of student interest. This paper describes the changes in one discipline, communication sciences and disorders, during the past century and the delineation of some of the lessons those changes offer to other disciplines.