Accountability and Opportunity in Higher Education: The Civil Rights Dimension

In Accountability and Opportunity in Higher Education, leading scholars address the unforeseen impact of accountability standards on students of color and the institutions that disproportionately serve them. The book describes how federal policies can worsen existing racial inequalities in higher education and offers alternative solutions aimed to protect and advance civil rights for low-income and minority students and their colleges.
 
This volume begins with a chapter putting higher education accountability in historical perspective and connecting it to the increasing importance of postsecondary education for upward mobility, coupled with rising barriers to minority student access and success. Based on a series of studies using cutting-edge research methodologies, the contributors suggest new ways to design and evaluate accountability policies that avoid predictable negative consequences.
 
Written against a backdrop of unequal opportunity and racial inequality in preparation for and access to higher education, Accountability and Opportunity in Higher Education arrives at a pivotal time in American education.

Contributors
Adriana Ruiz Alvarado
Dominique J. Baker
Daniel Corral
Valerie Crespín-Trujillo
Kevin Eagan
Stella M. Flores
Marybeth Gasman
Sara Goldrick-Rab
Jason Houle
Sylvia Hurtado
Willie Kirkland
Thai-Huy Nguyen
Anne-Marie Núñez
Toby J. Park
Awilda Rodríguez
Andrés Castro Samayoa
 

Gary Orfield is a Distinguished Research Professor of Education, Law, Political Science & Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is also codirector of the Civil Rights Project, which he co-founded at Harvard University in 1996. He is a political scientist whose work includes more than a dozen authored or edited books, one of which was cited by the Supreme Court in upholding affirmative action. Orfield’s work focuses on equal opportunity and civil rights and has been included in testimony in more than twenty major class action civil rights lawsuits on school segregation, housing discrimination, and other civil rights violations. He has taught at six universities, including Harvard University and the University of Chicago, and is a member of the National Academy of Education.

Nicholas Hillman is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he is also a faculty affiliate in Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education and the La Follette School of Public Affairs. His research focuses on postsecondary finance and financial aid policy, primarily as they relate to college access and equity, and his work includes research on student loan debt and default, performance-based funding, and college affordability. Hillman teaches courses in politics of higher education, higher education finance, educational policy, and research methods.