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College of Human Development, Culture, and Media

Program In Detail: Ph.D., Higher Education Leadership, Management and Policy

Program in Detail

During the course of the program students will gain familiarity with:

  • Basic trends in American higher education enrollment, staffing, degree production, institutional types, financial resources, etc., since World War II;
  • The historical antecedents of contemporary higher education forms and practices;
  • How American forms and practices compare with those of other nations;
  • Current policy issues in American higher education (i.e. the capacity to "list" the ten most critical policy issues and the capacity to describe current debate on those issues);
  • The classics of higher education research and theory in the basic areas of curriculum and instruction, history, organization and governance, faculty and student issues, government policy and finance issues, and comparative higher education (reading list to be distributed);
  • Basic data resources related to higher education, e.g. federal databases, including HEGIS/IPEDS, NCES surveys, etc., major independent data sources, including Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the National Research Council, etc;
  • The non-campus organizational matrix of American higher education, including the increasing number of membership and advocacy organizations representing various constituencies, including, e.g., ACE, AAHE, AGB, AACU, AAU, etc.;
  • Basic methodology and method of social science research, including the process of finding and adequately describing research problems, statistical estimation and inference, hypothesis testing and basic research reporting;
  • The basic techniques of qualitative research and survey research;
  • Basic organization and leadership theory;
  • Theory and research on reflective professional practice, presented in the work of Schon and Argyris;
  • Basic learning theory and pedagogy (at the individual and organizational level); and
  • Ethical issues in organizational life and frameworks for the analysis of ethical dilemmas in practice.