Higher and Postsecondary Education PhD

The Higher and Postsecondary Education (HPSE) Program at Teachers College, Columbia University strives to create knowledge, knowledgeable scholar-practitioners, and practicing scholars concerned broadly with teaching, learning, and scholarly and professional development; organizational and institutional analysis, including abilities to probe and develop the structures, processes, policies, and technologies that comprise colleges, universities, and state and national systems of tertiary education; social and comparative perspectives, with attention to the social, cultural, economic, and historic context of knowledge production, policy, and institutional development. We expect that students will work within and across these domains and scholarly disciplines, developing programs of study that, though focused on particular themes and issues (e.g., policy, scholarly learning and careers, student development, professional development), will be informed broadly and deeply by a diverse array of ideas, perspectives, and questions.

The Ph.D. degree in Higher and Postsecondary Education is designed to prepare scholars and researchers in the area of Higher Education. To achieve the purposes of the program, the Ph.D. was designed to provide both subject-matter competence and research skills (study design, methodology). The domain of inquiry for the Ph.D. is the field of higher education. However, each student will also select a discipline-based cognate as an anchor for their developing understanding of the multi-disciplinary field of higher education.

Candidates for the degree will be equipped to recognize significant issues and their value assumptions, identify problems needing research, and design and undertake original scholarly research projects that are likely to have direct application to a particular higher education setting. Candidates will also receive supervised training in the teaching of higher education as a field of study. The program will draw on designated College strengths in diverse research strategies/methods, tailoring these to the study of higher education when appropriate.

The Ph.D. in Higher Education is designed for students pursuing careers as academic faculty, administrators, policy analysts, and educational researchers. Since the PhD is a scholarly degree, the core objective of this degree program is to prepare researchers of the highest quality. Our program engages in broad explorations of higher and postsecondary education, and of the contexts that shape the enterprise and its activities. Ph.D. students conclude their program by writing a dissertation that, though focused on a particular research problem within higher and postsecondary education, reflects the deep understanding of knowledge structures underpinning a particular area of inquiry.