Menand points out that the end of the "golden age" marks the beginning of "the long-term job crisis for AMerican PhDs, and it was alo the beginning of serious economic pressures on the liberal arts college" (69).
He's right, and many commentators about the academic job market have made this point. I think that the term "crisis" is probably a misnomer, since what we're looking at is really a market shift, not a crisis.
In addition, the jobs crisis is related to the legitimacy crisis and the publishing crisis, as Khost and I have noted.
The other point to note is that the crisis of enrollment never materialized in any significant way, and college enrollments continue to be robust (if not at baby boom proportions). The college degree is more important than ever; the necessity of a liberal arts degree or one in the humanities is, however, less apparent.
Menand acknowledges this fact:
"American higher education did grow after 1975, but much more slowly; at a rate averaging about 1 percent a year. And it changed, but in a different way: it diversified" (69).
If I wanted to make this point, I could look at the tables and figure percentages for White men, Women, Blacks, and Latinos as a percentage of all BAs.
See also, job losses in sociology, for example:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/02/sociology
