This qualitative case study explores the experiences and sense of belonging for Valiant Region College (pseudonym) students who served as club leaders/officers during the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school year. Twelve students total were interviewed either individually or within focus groups and shared their personal experiences, trials and triumphs…

Urban community colleges have been studied primarily from a case study perspective, often highlighted by doctoral students conducting research at their institutions. Little of this scholarship, however, has been translated into the base of literature, as less than 5% of the citations in the largest search engines are focused on urban community…

Referring to failures in policy-driven public governance research this paper looks at strategising in higher education. It expands horizons for understanding university strategies in a more nuanced way than hitherto has been done. Deploying systems theory, it shows how different temporalities co-exist in strategies and how their change reflects…

The United States faces an unprecedented mental health crisis, with youth and young adults at the center. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 50 percent of college students reported at least one mental health concern. The COVID-19 pandemic notably exacerbated these issues and underscored the urgent need to identify and implement ways to…

This study focuses on how admissions at selective colleges and universities represent key racialized organizations. We analyzed data from 50 individual interviews of admissions professionals, through a theory of racialized organizations to recognize admissions as practices that consistently reproduces systemic inequities. We reveal how…

The United States faces an unprecedented mental health crisis, with youth and young adults at the center. Even before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, nearly 50 percent of college students reported at least one mental health concern. Without adequate mental health support, college students, including those at community colleges,…

We studied a case of a school in a high need setting that undertook multiple simultaneous initiatives during a major school reorganization. We focused on the simultaneous implementations of two comprehensive initiatives, one related to ambitious mathematics teaching and one related to the Understanding by Design curriculum writing process. We…

The lack of autonomy of university students is a current problem in higher education, being considered a skill that students must acquire. To meet the objectives of higher education, students, especially those enrolled in bachelor's degree programmes, must be assisted in achieving a greater capacity for self-regulation, for which teachers must…

State finance reforms have raised per-pupil spending and elevated the achievement of disadvantaged students over the past half-century. But we know little about how fresh funding may alter teacher staffing or the social and curricular organization of schools, mediating gains in learning. We find that US$1.1 billion in new yearly funding--arriving…