Higher education scholars have studied the American college presidency. Yet, fewer studies have prioritized the support systems needed to ensure that the presidential pipeline is representative of the students they serve. By examining the concept of sponsorship through a hermeneutical phenomenological approach, this piece described the mechanisms…

This study draws upon the first detailed longitudinal dataset on performance-based funding (PBF) to document the evolution and current landscape of PBF in American higher education. We show that while PBF has become increasingly common, states have experimented with adopting, abandoning, and re-adopting PBF over time. We also find a new wave of…

How have changes in the price of enrolling full time at public 2- and 4-year colleges affected student decisions about whether and where to enroll in college? Using local differences in the growth of tuition at community colleges and public 4-year colleges, we study the impact of public higher education tuition prices on the post-secondary…

Campuses are experimenting with new ways to structure and organize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work. Existing organizational structures tend to focus either on top-down or vertical ways of organizing DEI work (e.g. chief diversity officer positions) or more horizontally integrated designs such as DEI committees. These structures are…

It is well-established fact that sexual assault survivors who report the violence they endured are retraumatized by the reporting process, but there is limited research on how these institutional betrayals are enacted. The current study draws on ethnographic observation and interview data to explore how 24 administrators use gendered…

Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. In 2011, the Department of Education under President Obama issued a Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) advising schools of their obligation to protect Title IX rights by more effectively responding to campus sexual assault. Many observers hoped that this would promote gender…

Performance-funding for higher education diffused across the U.S. following the Great Recession that led to funding cuts for the system. Postsecondary funding never returned to pre-Recession levels, and public colleges are held to higher expectations even as the funding they might use to meet these expectations has diminished. This is a challenge…

In this paper, we employ Punctuated Equilibrium Theory to consider institutions' shifting goals, priorities, and constraints, and to explore the nature of change at colleges and universities in the United States. By exploiting annual changes in institutional budget decisions over a 29-year period, we seek to understand the extent to which…

Many policies in higher education are intended to improve college access and degree completion, yet often those policies fall short of their aims by making it difficult for prospective or current college students to access benefits for which they are eligible. Barriers that inhibit access to policy benefits, such as cumbersome paperwork, can weigh…

The purpose of this paper is to document the indirect effects of the Texas Top Ten Percent Plan on professional school degrees awarded and to propose the far reach of the law as an alternative argument in support of race-conscious admissions policies challenged under the strict scrutiny standard. Designed around the two tests of strict scrutiny,…

China's higher education expansion policy implemented in 1999 has substantially increased higher education opportunities. This paper investigates whether rural students do benefit more from the expansion policy and achieve educational equity between urban and rural areas. Based on the four waves of nationwide micro survey data, collected in 2000,…

Using data from four waves of the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) in 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016, this study examines the effect of the PGIB on veterans' student loans. Results indicate that the PGIB has significantly affected veteran students' borrowing behavior, with an average $1,100 reduction in Stafford Loans. Veteran students…

Despite the racial, ethnic, linguistic, geographic, and cultural heterogeneity of LatinXs, extant educational research positions them as a monoracial, and oftentimes monolithic, group. Most research on LatinXs primarily focuses on mestizX-identified individuals. Inadvertently, the presence and experiences AfroLatinXs have largely been…

Guided by a framework combining scholarship on critical consciousness and anti-racism in education, this narrative inquiry study sought to understand how practitioners within Gender and Sexuality Centers (GSCs) perceive their engagement with anti-racism. Centering the stories of 20 GSC professionals, findings revealed the racialized differences in…

For more than a century, scholars and policymakers have commented and debated on the purposes of higher education. These conversations reflect a combination of public and private goals, with an increasing emphasis on social mobility. The perspective of students, especially those currently enrolled and first-generation college goers for whom social…