In this article, taken from the 2019 ASHE Presidential address, Kristen A. Renn argues that to stay relevant and also to influence the direction of postsecondary education, there must be engagement in the will to reimagine the study of higher education. She discusses the challenges and opportunities for the future bound up in the fact that higher…

As members of ASHE, we have an obligation to ensure that ASHE is an association that both promotes career development of members and advances the production and dissemination of high-quality research-based knowledge on current and emerging issues in higher education. In this presidential address, I look to the future of ASHE, offering questions…

This ASHE presidential address considers the meaning of higher education's public accountability in the U.S. context. American higher education has always been publicly accountable in some sense, but the forms and expectations associated with accountability have changed significantly from colonial times to the present. The address traces the…

In this article, the author discusses the practical, theoretical, and empirical rationale for linking diversity with the central educational and civic mission of higher education. While these links may be obvious to some, oftentimes diversity and race issues are conspicuously absent from discussions about learning and civic education. This…

In this paper, originally delivered as the 2004 ASHE presidential address, the author relates four streams of his research to the increasingly stratified system of U.S. higher education. He traces the effects of academic capitalism and the new economy, identifies the rise of managerial professionals as a Mode III form of production, discusses the…

The academic common law may soon vanish, not as a result of court action but due to the American Association of University Professors's declining role in defending the common law of academic employment. The profession is challenged to maintain its independence from external control by reconsidering its own common law. (Author/MLW)

A meta-analysis of 31 studies found financial aid to have a small, but significant, positive effect on student persistence, enabling lower-income students to persist at a rate roughly equal to that of middle- and upper-income students. (Author/MLW)

The expressway is employed as a metaphor for aspects of administrator mobility and some of the tensions inherent in administration as a profession are examined. Thorstein Veblen's concern for the use of business practices and values in academe are discussed and related to current practice. (Author/MLW)

The rate of return on investments in higher education, defined as a measure of productivity that relates the costs of resources expended in instruction to the value of benefits produced, is discussed and computed for several student populations. The concepts of "overeducation" and "underemployment" are also discussed. (SF)

Using a feminist poststructuralist perspective, investigated academic feminism as a case of transformation in higher education. Used narrative analysis to examine the transformative role of feminist scholarship in the contexts of disciplines, departments, and the university, illustrated by the life histories of nine diverse feminists and their…

The literature on diversity in higher education spans a broad range of issues. However, while broad in range, contemporary scholarship on diversity in higher education often suffers from a view of diversity that is ahistorical and acontextual. Through a critique of a study by Wolf-Wendel, Toma, and Morphew (2001), aims to demonstrate how…

Analyses found that: (1) the SAT predicts academic success more accurately for Black students in predominantly Black rather than White colleges; (3) the SAT predicts best for Black males in Black colleges but worst for Black males in White colleges; and (4) the SAT-GPA correlation is strongest for high-achieving Black students who focus on…

Using 1993 and 1997 Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) data, investigated the relationship between involvement, interaction, and satisfaction for African American students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Found that HBCU enrollment had a significant positive effect…

Using national longitudinal data, compared the academic development among African American students attending historically Black and White institutions of higher education. Found no significant differences on self-reported academic ability, writing, and mathematics. However, students at Black institutions tend to be more socio-economically…

Examined the enactment and early implementation of remedial education policies in Massachusetts and Oklahoma. Findings suggested that efforts to end or restrict remediation are driven largely by status attainment concerns--the desire by policy makers and administrators to create "competitive advantage" for certain public higher education…