Kathryn M. Moore

Job Search: Career Changes among Community College Administrators.

Abstract: Job search activities employed by two-year college administrators in searches for their current positions. Based on Granovetter’s (1974) findings from an important study of the job matching process, they paid specific attention to the importance of personal contacts versus formal sources of information and methods of becoming a candidate, structural factors that influence contact networks, and whether job-search behavior differed by type of administrative position. The study also examined the consistency of job-search behaviork activeness of search, and belief in effectiveness of job search process. It discusses relative openness and fairness of the job-matching process.

Social Origins of Higher Education Administrators.

Who controls education and whose interests does education represent? Using two national samples of two-year and four-year college and university administrators, the authors identify the social origins of higher education administrators as a beginning point for answering these questions. They conclude that the leadership of American colleges and universities has become more diverse over time—but not as much as we might expect. The proportion of administrators from working-class backgrounds has not increased; and the hundreds of administrative positions newly created during the 1970s have not, apparently, welcomed individuals from working class backgrounds, women, or minorities. The social origins of two-year and four-year administrators are also more similar than previously reported.

INTER‐INSTITUTIONAL JOB MOBILITY IN TWO‐YEAR COLLEGES AND INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS

Career histories, including characteristics of institution of employment, of a national sample of two‐year college administrators are used to determine if administrator mobility is associated with selected institutional variables: state, region, mission, size and resource level. Proceeding from the knowledge that two‐year colleges constitute a labor market for administrators, this study extends the work of Smolansky (1984) who found that region, type of control, mission, size and resource level form barriers to administrator mobility for administrators in four‐year colleges and universities. Findings suggest that state and region are particularly powerful structures affecting mobility of two‐year college administrators. Mission, size and resource level do not exert the same influence on administrator mobility in this sector.

Thinking about Advanced Learning Systems

Research in higher education is approaching a watershed in its history. There is a need to consider how best to deploy our intellectual resources to best effect. At ALS, even as we strive to become better and more sophisticated analysts of conditions and dynamics within our own local and national higher education setting, we are determined to move with the times. And the times suggest far more connection and dynamism in higher education on a global basis. The themes we have selected: human capacity with attention to leadership, diversity, technology, and globalization, are only a few of the ones that will be important to understanding the advanced learning systems that are emerging. We believe that one of the best ways to study these innovating systems is to create among higher education scholars an advanced learning system of our own, one that can become a powerful means of understanding higher education in the next century. We look forward to that possibility.

Reflections on Higher Education Research.

Two senior scholars individually assess the first four volumes of Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, a series whose existence denotes efforts to establish the study of higher education as a discipline. Both individually and collectively, these assessments provide a thoughtful commentary on the nature of higher education as a field of study and the state of research in this field.