A sense of belonging at university: student retention, motivation and enjoyment
Introduction University students’ sense of belonging is increasingly recognized for its impact on their retention, motivation, and enjoyment. The psychological need for belonging, a concept central to Baumeister and Leary’s theories and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, facilitates social integration in addition to academic engagement and success. This research highlights the critical role of belonging in…
Read MoreStruggling for the anti-racist university: learning from an institution-wide response to curriculum decolonisation
Introduction In the enduring struggle to build ‘the antiracist university,’ scholars explore why this struggle to produce meaningful structural change in academia persists – and how we might imagine a path forward. In this article, Richard Hall et al. describe the long and strenuous history of university decolonization processes, which have aimed to disentangle institutional…
Read MoreBait and Switch: Representation, Climate, and Tensions of Diversity Work in Graduate Education
Introduction Historically, students who are admitted to and matriculate from graduate programs do not reflect the racial diversity of the US population at large. Most American graduate programs are comprised predominantly of white students while Black, Indigenous, and students of color make up a much smaller relative percentage. This is especially true for programs in…
Read MoreRacial Disparities in Student Debt and the Reproduction of the Fragile Black Middle Class
Introduction In the US, a college degree is a prerequisite for access to many middle-class and high-paying jobs. Yet, the social and economic payoff of a college degree is racialized, as evidenced by the highest economic disparities across races existing within the college-educated middle class. Relatedly, a growing body of research recognizes that the burdens…
Read MoreTeaching Race at Historically White Colleges and Universities: Identifying and Dismantling the Walls of Whiteness
Introduction Many white students enter postsecondary education fortified by “walls of whiteness,” or manifestations of racial privilege that shield white students from challenges to white supremacist assumptions about racial disparities and inequality. Those assumptions are reinforced in historically white colleges and universities that are predominately staffed by white male faculty and primarily attended by middle-…
Read MoreBullied Out of Positions: Black Women’s Complex Intersectionality, Workplace Bullying, and Resulting Career Disruption
Living at the intersection of multiple systems of oppression makes Black women disproportionately vulnerable to workplace bullying in higher education. Introduction The article examines the impact of workplace bullying’ on the self-determination and career advancement of marginalized populations in education. Workplace bullying refers to persistent patterns of harmful, targeted mistreatment by individuals from the dominant…
Read MoreCommon Goals and Golden Opportunities: Evaluations of Diversity Education in Academic and Organizational Settings
Introduction In this paper, Dr. Carol T. Kulik and Dr. Loriann Roberson investigate the effects of diversity education interventions across different learning outcomes and contexts. In conducting their literature review, Kulik and Roberson aimed to answer two questions: Does diversity education affect participant diversity knowledge, diversity attitudes, and diversity skills? Do these effects vary by…
Read MoreBuilding the Anti-racist University, action and new agendas
Introduction Dr. Ian Law, founding director of the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies (CERS) at the University of Leeds, reviews twenty years of scholarship and initiatives by the Centre related to racism and higher education in the UK. Founded in 1998, CERS produces policy-relevant research that seeks to dismantle racism. In the 1990s, the…
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