The Corporatization of Student Affairs by Daniel K. Cairo & Victoria Cabal

Author:Daniel K. Cairo & Victoria Cabal
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030881283
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Personal Responsibility

Tensions were wrought across all our findings, including participants’ sense of personal responsibility toward their work as student affairs educators. We understand “general neoliberal tendencies include prioritizing individual freedoms over collective liberty and personal responsibility over shared welfare” (Kezar et al., 2019, p. 14). Perhaps the tension student affairs professionals experience in defining their work is due in part to defining it as a personal responsibility rather than a collective institutional mission.

Across all student affairs positions and departments, work was described as human-centered. Given that the student affairs profession was founded on the development of the whole person (Kuh et al., 2005; Nuss, 2003; Thelin, 2011), it seems an apt description of the sense of responsibility across the division. While varying theories have been used to frame the human-centered approach in student affairs, it has, since its inception as a Dean of Women and a Dean of Men, been centered on the holistic student experience as critical to the profession’s mission (Nuss, 2003). However, as study participants indicated, it is often this human-centered ethic that comes into conflict with the institutional expectations across U.S. higher education today around efficiency and accountability.

Throughout our numerous interactions with student affairs professionals, we consistently heard a sense of this personal responsibility to “meet students where they are.” The theme of personal responsibility can be understood as the personal values that inform professional identity centered on the social good of education with a holistic and humanistic focus of student affairs work, even when this professional identity comes into contradiction with institutional identity and demands. Thus, student affairs professionals defined personal responsibility as human-centered, built on relationships, focused on meeting a goal of social good, and a deep commitment to the institutional mission.

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