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Trailblazing Transformation: Pioneering Transformative Peacebuilding In Academic Labor Conflicts, Sam Frazier Hediger

Dissertations and Theses

Unionized contingent faculty in the United States face an increasingly difficult economic landscape in their labor-management conflicts with university administrations. These unions, comprised of graduate student employees and adjunct instructors, won significant victories for their members but have failed to shift the broader patterns of casualization, unsustainable compensation, and job precarity, stemming from the systemic debasement of higher education institutions and the American labor movement, both of which pose significant challenges to conventional conflict resolution strategies. To find a path forward, this thesis explores the nature and possibility of transforming of the academic labor conflict, using a transformative peacebuilding approach …

Mission Adrift: The Impact Of Managerialism On Graduate Social Work Education, Carolyn Hanesworth

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Neoliberal policies have led to the installation of managerialism, or the application of business practices and principles in institutions of higher education. Although much is known about the impact of managerialism on faculty in the overall academy, very little is known about its impact in specific disciplines, particularly in the United States. Using semi-structured interviews, this dissertation investigates how social work faculty experience and negotiate managerialism in the traditional pillars of teaching, service, and scholarship.

This study found that managerialism leads universities to place new and increased demands for productivity, efficiency, and accountability on social work faculty. Respondents report major …

Identity Development As A Pathway To Self-Authorship: A Restructure Of Neoliberal Programming Practices, Christopher Mychajluk

West Chester University Master’s Theses

The original purpose of student affairs was to help develop the whole student outside of just academics. I argue that to develop the whole student, student affairs professionals must aid in students’ exploration of self-authorship. Student affairs professionals do this work by putting on programs that allow students to explore their identities. I explore how this work is compromised by neoliberalism and as a result silos students’ ability to explore their whole self. To mitigate this issue, I propose a two-part intervention that restructures student affairs programming budgets as one shared budget in order to facilitate the formation of large-scale …

Re-Storying The Cost Of Higher Education: A Narrative Approach To Addressing The Racial Disparities In Student Loan Debt, Sarah Yaskowski

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This thesis investigates educational debt as a racialized construct resulting from deeply entrenched disparities expounded by the current marketization of higher education. Once hailed as a pathway to the American Dream, pursuing a college education meant access to the middle class which promised greater social capital and socioeconomic mobility. Yet for many students, specifically minority students of color who carry disproportionate amounts of educational debt fueled by this false promise, the realities of this pursuit are far direr. By framing the discussion through the theoretical lens of Critical Race Theory, this research attempts a more critical review of the discriminatory …

Leading For Change: Incorporating The Values Of The Liberal Arts In Student Affairs Practice, Ben Shalk

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Higher education, once a public good, has undergone a period of systemic divestment. The business model of the university, perpetuated by neoliberalism, has changed the values of higher education. Traditionally, the core mission of higher education created critically-engaged citizens who sought to democratize society. In its current state, higher education has lost its status as a public good that benefited all of society. The liberal arts can reinvigorate higher education by reengaging students through contemplative methods. Student affairs educators live in a world of limited budgets and neoliberal practices. The connection of neoliberalism to their work in student affairs will …

The “Other” Teacher: Understanding The Experience Of Graduate Teaching Assistants In Neoliberal Teacher Education Settings, Jing Zhang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

In this study, I critically examine how graduate teaching assistants’ (GTAs’) experiences are discursively shaped by the exercise of power in neoliberal higher education contexts and hence, to reveal the hidden aspects of educational institutions, which are central to our understandings about the meaning of truth, fairness, and equity embedded in neoliberal academic settings. To understand the experiences of graduate teaching assistants in this neoliberal teacher education setting, the major research questions of this study explore how the different identities that GTAs possess influence their interactions with the neoliberal higher education context and how they navigate as well as resist …

I Don’T Really Work Here: Part-Time Faculty And The Adjunctification Of Higher Ed., Maggie Cawley

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This critical action research thesis will explore the 40-year rise of adjunctification, the term coined to describe the increased reliance on adjunct and contingent labor in institutions of higher education. This thesis will examine adjunctification’s detrimental effects on teaching in higher education as a profession, on adjuncts and contingent teachers, and on students. Institutional overreliance on adjunct faculty as cheap, ad hoc labor flies in the face of the role that education should play in society: to develop student potentiality and capacity for critical thought. I believe that the casualization of teaching and the subsequent rise of adjunctification preclude these …

Back To Our Roots: Revolutionizing Black Greek Letter Organizations To Dismantle Racism In Higher Education, Ashley Lyles

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Black Greek Letter Organizations (BGLOs) started appearing across college campuses in the early 1900s at a time when racism was widely spread and accepted in society and institutions of higher education. Over time, BGLOs that existed at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) were forced to assimilate to the norms of the dominant culture as a way to mitigate the acts of racial bias and discrimination that these organizations were often subjected to. Throughout generations, BGLOs have continued to be deculturalized and therefore have moved further away from their intended purpose of fighting racial inequality and promoting racial uplift. This thesis seeks …