The Few, the Proud, the Profs

For an academic field so self-consciously preoccupied with intelligence, the humanities don’t seem to be run very intelligently. Humanities fields now account for only around five percent of all baccalaureate degrees awarded annually, hundreds of foreign language programs have been lost, and the job market for newly minted Ph.D.s is abysmal. “But humanities departments are way too busy being brilliant,” Mark Bauerlein writes, “to be sensible and managerial.”

Expanding the Role of Community Colleges With Workforce Baccalaureate Programs

Community colleges have been expanding their mission to include the conferring of bachelor's degrees in career education programs for many years, which has been met with consternation over the quality of a bachelor's degree from a community college, as well as with resources in higher education being limited or redirected when there has been cutbacks in funding. Legislators in some states and critics in higher education refer to the phenomenon of community colleges offering baccalaureate degrees as mission creep, opposed to seeing the equity value in higher degree attainment. Thus, the purpose of the study is to analyze state policies through examination of secondary data to determine the purpose of the community college bachelor's degree programs nationwide, the types of programs being offered, as well as what the phenomenon reveals about being a viable pathway to a higher education degree for the typical community college student.

The CUNY Remediation Debate and Coalitions: Information Matters

This single case study uses the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Multiple Streams Framework to understand the ways higher education policy actors at the city-, state-, and system-level used information to build coalitions and change admission standards during the remediation debate at the City University of New York. By examining what information was used, when it was presented, by whom, and for what purposes, this study helps improve our understanding of the policymaking process and the role information can play in high-stakes debates with major consequences, including limiting student access to baccalaureate degrees. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.

Where do Latinas and Latinos earn social science doctorates?

It is a national imperative to increase the percentage of Latinas and Latinos who earn doctorate degrees in the social sciences and who enter into faculty positions. For the purposes of this study, I focus on whether Latinas and Latinos earned their doctorates at the nation’s most research-intensive universities because those schools are uniquely equipped to prepare doctoral students for careers in academia. I find that more than 40% of Latinas and Latinos who earned social science doctorates did so at universities with lower research profiles. I also test whether there are relationships between Latinas’ and Latino’s undergraduate institutions (e.g., community colleges and Hispanic Serving Institutions) and doctoral universities (classified by research-intensity). I did not find a relationship between attending community college and the type of university where a Latina or Latino social scientist earned the PhD. However, I found that Latinas and Latinos who earned baccalaureate degrees from Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) had higher relative risk of earning doctorates from less research-intensive universities. This institutional pathway may be beneficial for increasing the number of Latinas and Latinos who earn social science doctorate degrees; however, it may be problematic for preparing future faculty members. I discuss implications for supporting the Latina-Latino pathway to the PhD.

Academic Advising and the Community College Baccalaureate: Implications for Research, Policy, and Practice

An increasing number of community colleges have expanded their programmatic offerings to include baccalaureate degrees. In this national, mixed methods study, we examined how and to what extent the implementation of baccalaureate degree programs has impacted academic advising policies and practices across U.S. community colleges. Survey and interview data highlighted the reorganization of advising and adoption of various advising models as well as the need for collaborations, communication, and professional development. In addition to underscoring the overall complexities involved in establishing four-year degree programs at the community college, results from this study helped us illuminate implications for policy and planning as well as suggested areas for future research related to advising.

Pipeline Dreams: Occupational Plans and Gender Differences in STEM Major Persistence and Completion

In the United States, women are more likely than men to enter and complete college, but they remain underrepresented among baccalaureates in science-related majors. We show that in a cohort of college entrants who graduated from high school in 2004, men were more than twice as likely as women to complete baccalaureate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, including premed fields, and more likely to persist in STEM/biomed after entering these majors by sophomore year. Conversely, women were more than twice as likely as men to earn baccalaureates in a health field, although persistence in health was low for both genders. We show that gender gaps in high school academic achievement, self-assessed math ability, and family-work orientation are only weakly associated with gender gaps in STEM completion and persistence. Gender differences in occupational plans, by contrast, are strongly associated with gender gaps in STEM outcomes, even in models that assume plans are endogenous to academic achievement, self-assessed math ability, and family-work orientation. These results can inform efforts to mitigate gender gaps in STEM attainment.

The Impact of Community College Baccalaureate Adoption on Associate Degree Production

Background/Context As of 2018, a total of 19 states allow at least one community college to offer baccalaureate degrees. Previous researchers have suggested that community college baccalaureate (CCB) adoption will lead to a host of unintended consequences, including decreases in associate degree production. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study empirically examines the impact of CCB adoption on associate degree production and adds to conversations surrounding the consequences of CCB adoption. Research Design We use a quantitative quasi-experimental research design to examine the effect of CCB adoption on associate degree production. Findings/Results When comparing adopting and non-adopting community colleges within the state of Florida, the authors find that the adoption of CCB degree programs has a positive impact on overall associate degree production, but this impact varies considerably according to the type of academic degree program. Conclusions/Recommendations Opponents of CCB legislation have argued that giving community colleges the authority to confer baccalaureate degrees will detract from the sub-baccalaureate institutional mission of community colleges, but our results suggest that the adoption of a CCB degree program is associated with an overall increase in associate degree production. Findings from this work should be an important consideration for policymakers seeking to increase baccalaureate degree production in addition to—not at the expense of—associate degree programs.