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Empirical studies reveal Black male student-athletes have both positive and negative experiences on predominantly White college and university campuses. Mindful also of race-based stereotypic beliefs about Black male student-athletes in collegiate sports, these phenomena warrant further discourse and scrutiny. Critical race theory is a race-centered theoretical and analytical framework that has shaped discourse on race and racism in intercollegiate athletics in recent years. Discourse in this chapter is therefore grounded in the narrative of critical race theory and focuses primarily on the academic and athletic plight of Black male student-athletes matriculating at predominantly White colleges and universities with National Collegiate Athletic Association affiliation.

This research paper aims to better understand the network structure of higher education in North America. It draws on a relationally networked dataset of 1,292 degree-granting colleges and universities in North America to develop a modularity class approach to categorizing colleges and universities based on their own self-defined peer networks and assesses the utility of the modularity class approach as well as several measures of network centrality for predicting offerings of new curricular fields. Results show that not all measures of network centrality equally predict organizational change outcomes, with hub/authority position being most important. Additionally, results show that an empirically derived modularity class approach to categorizing organizations has important strengths in relation to more typical approaches based on prestige or perceived organizational characteristics. The approaches detailed in this paper will be useful for future analysts seeking to explain the spread of innovations and behavior across the higher education institutional field, as well as those seeking to understand clustering and organizational divergence.

This chapter focuses on the social responsibility of public universities and community colleges to expand access to higher education through collaboration. Higher education has historically been riddled with hierarchies, including selective admissions, institutional rankings and faulty narratives about the inferiority of community colleges. More recently, there has been a shift in the relationship between community colleges and universities as universities begin to see the value of reaching out to their communities, diversifying their student bodies and providing alternative pathways to a bachelor’s degree. The authors begin by arguing that public universities should collaborate with their community college counterparts to right historical wrongs, serve the broader community and maximize the use of public resources. The authors then present a case study of a concurrent-use partnership model between institutions and highlight the everyday practices that contribute to successful implementation. The authors conclude by describing the benefits of collaboration for institutions and students with the goal of showing that social responsibility and organizational effectiveness go hand in hand.

Many Black women continue to negotiate their way within higher education institutions, which are influenced by social class, race, and gender biases. Several scholars contend that Black women’s objectification as the “other” and “outsider within” (Collins, 2000; Fitzgerald, 2014; Jean-Marie, 2014) is still apparent in today’s institutions yet many persist to ascend to top leadership positions (Bates, 2007; Epps, 2008; Evans, 2007; Hamilton, 2004; Jean-Marie, 2006, 2008). In particular, the inroads made by Black women administrators in both predominantly white colleges (PWIs) as well as historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) depict a rich and enduring history of providing leadership to effect social change in the African American community (i.e., uplift the race) and at large (Bates, 2007; Dede & Poats, 2008; Evans, 2007; Hine, 1994; Miller & Vaughn, 1997). There is a growing body of literature exploring Black women’s leadership in higher education, and most research have focused on their experiences in predominantly white institutions (Bower & Wolverton, 2009; Dixon, 2005; Harris, Wright, & Msengi, 2011; Jordan, 1994; Rusher, 1996; Turner, 2008). A review of the literature points to the paucity of research on their experiences and issues of race and gender continue to have an effect on the advancement of Black women in the academy. In this chapter, we examine factors that create hindrance to the transformation of the composition, structure, and power of leadership paradigm with a particular focus on Black women administrators and those at the presidency at HBCUs. From a review of the literature, our synthesis is based on major themes and subthemes that emerged and guide our analysis in this chapter. The chapter concludes with recommendations for identifying and developing Black women leaders to diversify the leadership pipeline at HBCUs and other institutions for the future.

Can having more education than a job requires reduce one’s chances of being offered the job? We study this question in a sample of applications to jobs that are posted on an urban Chinese website. We find that being overqualified in this way does not reduce the success rates of university-educated jobseekers applying to college-level jobs, but that it does hurt college-educated workers’ chances when applying to jobs requiring technical school, which involves three fewer years of education than college. Our results highlight a difficult situation faced by the recent large cohort of college-educated Chinese workers: They seem to fare poorly in the competition for jobs, both when pitted against more-educated university graduates and less-educated technical school graduates.

This paper examines the growth of private corporate influence in American higher education. A key question is corporate philanthropy and privatization at what cost? The terms often used in these discussions are commodification of the academy, privatization of a public good, or the increasing corporatization of higher education. Today, American universities are responding to the demands of the marketplace, as knowledge is being used as a form of venture capital and where professors have become academic entrepreneurs and students have become consumers. The foregoing is made more complex as an increasingly diverse student pool seeks access to postsecondary education, in the face of federal policies that serve to restrict access and financial support. A discussion of the collateral costs of our corporate culture as we face challenges to access, equity, and opportunity in America in the twenty-first century concludes this paper.