COVID-19 caused major disruptions within higher education. Although these disruptions affected students, faculty, and staff, perhaps the most shocking disruption was the layoffs of full-time faculty during the pandemic. This case study frames how, within a power dynamic of nontrust, we collected the required subjective statements for a mixed…

Identity and branding in higher education institutions is one of the many attributes of a university that potential students look for when searching for a place to study. This phenomenological qualitative study used interviews of eleven current and past students at the University of the Great Lakes (UGL) to discover what attributes of the…

This critical discourse analysis examined the perceptions and their role in social practice of both internal and external constituents of five women and five men university presidents at doctoral-granting institutions who resigned or were fired from their positions through an analysis of publicly available commentary (e.g., social media, blogs).…

The current article deals with the antecedents that generate a phenomenon of a mismatch between an academic graduates' field of education and their occupational field (horizontal mismatch). The two examined antecedents were the individuals' career history and their "career identity" level. It has been found that (a) the more expansive…

Staff positions are often the first to go when colleges cut budgets. Over time, position elimination can destroy the career ladders on which employees based their plans. This chapter outlines how that dynamic emerged, and how the "guided pathways" movement may push against it.

As colleges confront challenging circumstances, the prospect of small, private college closures remains pertinent. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of displaced employees due to college closure. For this study, Schlossberg's (1981) transition theory was used as a foundational lens. Although there…

The COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian government's response, and longer-term influences within Australia's higher education sector, provided the background and rationale for this study in an Australian public university. From a context of how Antipodean University (AU) dealt with the revenue crisis, this paper describes how a sample of staff were…

We present a case-based role-play exercise that effectively simulates a crisis students must manage. In the exercise, a farm equipment manufacturing company has decided to redirect its product line, and this change requires laying off a significant portion of its workforce. Students must grapple with the fact that a local news report will be…

Leading organizational change is a daunting aspect of leadership. However, effectively leading change enables positive individual and organizational outcomes. Herein, we present a case-based classroom exercise to teach students about organizational change, demonstrate different aspects of the change process, and teach how to overcome resistance to…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact Jesuit tenets have on the attitudes of survivors of workforce reduction who were employed at Jesuit institutions of higher education during the early years of the COVID-19. The researcher interviewed seven current employees from five different Jesuit institutions to ascertain their feelings…

This dissertation consists of three chapters that study individual investment in human capital and the incidence of economic shocks. I use administrative data to answer these questions, developing and applying structural methods to analyze individual choices in combination with a careful consideration of research design. Chapter 1 studies the…

Displaced workers suffer large and persistent earnings losses. These losses can be mitigated by returning to school, yet the extent to which such workers enroll in post-secondary education in response to displacement is poorly understood. Using employer-employee-student matched administrative data from Ohio, we provide the first direct evidence of…

This study assesses the impact of involuntary job loss on college persistence by leveraging different job-loss timings relative to a student's college enrollment decision. We find that job loss increases the probability that a working college student leaves college before attaining a degree, but access to short-term credit through credit card…

The main purpose of this research is to examine the employment crisis among the unemployed youth with higher education. In particular, the research investigates the subjective experience of the youth representatives (n = 188) in the situation of job loss or inability to find it. For this purpose, the research uses the method of ranking social and…

Every year, 2 million first-time, full-time undergraduate students enter a degree-granting postsecondary institution in the United States, but more than one-third leave college before obtaining a college degree. This report's analysis shows that job loss has an adverse effect on college persistence for 18- to 24-year-old US working students, that…