Category: online college

anothergirlontheirt:

I’m pleased to be organizing an AERA research conference, “Access, Competition, and For-Profit Colleges” in collaboration with Sandy Darity, The Research Network on Racial & Ethnic Inequality, and with generous support from the AERA Conference Grant.

This interdisciplinary two-day conference will convene September 21-22, 2012 at Duke University. You can register and learn more here.

This conference dovetails with my research on legitimacy, race, gender, and outcomes of for-profit higher education so I’m very excited.

The conference objectives  attend to three major goals: a survey of existing for-profit literature, an analysis of major gaps in existing literature with an attention to methodological concerns in the study of for-profits; and, an agenda for proposed research on for-profits.

Scheduled panels include:

Mapping the For-profit Research Landscape

For-Profit Higher Education and The Social Good

Race, Class, and Gender: Who are For-profit students?

The Problem of Data: How to Study For-profits

Public Finance, Competition, and For-profits: Do The Means Justify The Ends?

Online Pedagogy, Social Media, and Representation in For-Profits

I’m particularly excited about the Emerging Scholarship panel. It includes papers on:

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Emory University  “Legitimacy and Mobility: When Becoming ‘Real College’ Is An Institutional Barrier”

Christine Tracy and Molly Kleinman, University of Michigan  “The Acquisition of Non-profit Colleges and Universities by For-profit Corporations in the United States”

Thomas Mays, University of Dayton  “Social Capital and For-profit Colleges”

Rohit Dutta Roy, Jadavpur University  “Privatization of Education in India and the Conflicts with Equity Objective: Should Higher Education be Seen as a Business for ‘Profit-Making”

I could not be more pleased with the engagement of scholars from across the disciplinary spectrum: Sara Goldrick-Rab, Jorge Klor De Alva, Mark Schneider, MaryBeth Gasman, Laura Perna, Kevin Kinser, Letitia Oseguera, Gaye Tuchman to name a few. Goldie Blumenstyk  and Victor Borden from CHE and IHE, respectively, will also be in the house.

We’re aiming to do nothing short of move the conversation about for-profit education forward to produce rigorous interdisciplinary research, theoretically grounded and publicly engaged on a topic that too often dissolves into polemics.