Tressie McMillan Cottom

Last updated

Tressie McMillan Cottom
Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom.jpg
Born (1976-10-09) October 9, 1976 (age 48)
Harlem, New York City, U.S.
Academic background
Education North Carolina Central University (BA)
Emory University (MA, PhD)
Thesis Becoming Real Colleges in the Financialized Era of U.S. Higher Education: The Expansion and Legitimation of For-Profit Colleges  (2015)
Main interestsAmerican higher education, race, inequality, work, technology
Notable works

Tressie McMillan Cottom (born October 9, 1976) [1] [2] is an American writer, sociologist, and professor. She is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science (SILS) and an affiliate of the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP) at UNC-Chapel Hill. [3] She is also an opinion columnist at The New York Times. [4]

Contents

She was formerly an associate professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and a faculty associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. McMillan Cottom is the author of Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy and Thick: And Other Essays , a co-editor of For-Profit Universities and Digital Sociologies, an essayist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic , Slate , The New York Times , and The Washington Post , and co-host of the podcast Hear to Slay with author Roxane Gay. She is frequently quoted in print and television media as an academic expert on inequality and American higher education. In 2020, McMillan Cottom was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of her work "at the confluence of race, gender, education, and digital technology." [5]

Early life and education

North Carolina Central University, where McMillan Cottom earned her BA North Carolina Central University campus entranc.JPG
North Carolina Central University, where McMillan Cottom earned her BA

McMillan Cottom was born in Harlem and raised in Winston-Salem and Charlotte, North Carolina. [6] [7] Her mother was a member of the Black Panther Party in Winston-Salem. [8] Before completing her undergraduate degree, McMillan Cottom worked as an enrollment officer at a technical college, a job that would inform her later research and her first book. [9] In 2009, [10] McMillan Cottom received a B.A. from North Carolina Central University, a public HBCU, in English and political science. [11]

While pursuing her Ph.D. at Emory University, McMillan Cottom was a visiting fellow at the University of California, Davis Center for Poverty Research and a Microsoft Research Social Media Collective intern. [12] [13] She also wrote the biweekly "Counter Narrative" column for Slate magazine. [14] She earned a PhD in sociology from Emory University in 2015, with a dissertation on the legitimacy of for-profit higher education institutions. [15]

Career

In 2015 McMillan Cottom was appointed assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. [16] [17] She was awarded tenure and promoted to the rank of associate professor in 2019. In 2020, she left Virginia Commonwealth University to join the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. [3]

Public persona

Before the publication of her book Lower Ed , McMillan Cottom was known primarily as an essayist and academic expert on issues of inequality, higher education, and race. [18] She writes from the analytical perspective of intersectionality. [19] Her essays have advocated for reparations to African Americans, [20] argued that racism rather than political correctness is the real threat to university campus life, [21] and suggested that black girls are treated as more adult than white girls. [22] She is a contributing editor at Dissent and one of HuffPost 's commissioned opinion columnists. [23] In addition to her own writing, McMillan Cottom has been featured in The New York Times , [24] National Public Radio (NPR), [25] Harvard Educational Review , [26] Mother Jones , [27] Inside Higher Ed , [28] and The Daily Show . [29]

Drawing on her experience dealing with controversy as a public intellectual, McMillan Cottom wrote a guide for academics who come under public attack from organized digital campaigns. [30] [31] In 2019, McMillan Cottom and Roxane Gay launched a podcast called Hear to Slay to "amplify the voices and work of black women". [32] McMillan Cottom received the Public Understanding of Sociology Award from the American Sociological Association in 2020. [33]

Lower Ed

McMillan Cottom's 2017 book Lower Ed is an analysis of the for-profit educational sector from the perspective of students trying to navigate a "risky and highly variable" economy. [24] Lower Ed is based on interviews with students and college executives, analysis of for-profit college promotional materials, and McMillan Cottom's own experience working as an enrollment officer at two for-profit institutions. The main finding is that rising emphasis on credentialism in the American job market pushes students to make riskier but individually rational trade-offs in order to obtain educational credentials. [34]

According to McMillan Cottom, for-profit institutions are generally more expensive than non-profit institutions and aggressively market to low-income and working poor students who qualify for the most financial aid, but students are making considered choices about their futures and are not simply being duped by marketing. [35] Lower Ed suggests that policies intended to constrain the marketing behavior of for-profit institutions will not address the underlying political economy issue, and may increase inequalities, especially gender inequalities, in the distribution of valued educational credentials and jobs. [28] [36] Harvard Educational Review described Lower Ed as "theoretically provocative, empirically rich, and enjoyable to read". [26]

Thick

McMillan Cottom's book Thick: And Other Essays was published by The New Press in 2019. John Warner, writing for the Chicago Tribune , described Thick as "the story of Cottom's life" but also "a kind of manifesto". [37] The book draws on examples from McMillan Cottom's own personal life in the form of personal essays. These essays touch on topic including sexual abuse, divorce, and the death of a child, to discuss broader issues in race, beauty, and education, such as why black women can never be seen as beautiful, why universities prefer African students to African American students, and how assumptions about wealth, competence, and pain undermine black women's efforts to achieve health and financial security. [38]

Publishers Weekly gave Thick a starred review, concluding that "the collection showcases Cottom's wisdom and originality". [6] Rebecca Stoner, writing for Pacific Standard , praised the broad appeal of Thick, noting that McMillan Cottom "makes it possible for her readers, whether or not they are black women, to understand the interdependent nature of our oppressions". [39] The New York Times praised "the author's skillful interweaving of the academic with the popular" and concluded that Thick "is sure to become a classic of black intellectualism". [40] Thick was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction. [41]

Awards

Works

Books

Selected essays

Related Research Articles

<i>The Chronicle of Higher Education</i> American newspaper

The Chronicle of Higher Education is an American newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty and student affairs professionals, including staff members and administrators. A subscription is required to read some articles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grand Canyon University</span> Christian university in Phoenix, Arizona, US

Grand Canyon University (GCU) is a private for-profit Christian university in Phoenix, Arizona. The university offers degrees in over 200 areas of study and is administratively divided into 9 colleges. As of September 2023, more than 100,000 students were enrolled online and in person, making it one of the largest Christian universities by enrollment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Higher education in the United States</span> Education beyond high school

In the United States, higher education is an optional stage of formal learning following secondary education. It is also referred to as post-secondary education, third-stage, third-level, or tertiary education. It covers stages 5 to 8 on the International ISCED 2011 scale. It is delivered at 3,931 Title IV degree-granting institutions, known as colleges or universities. These may be public or private universities, research universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, or for-profit colleges. U.S. higher education is loosely regulated by the government and by several third-party organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southern New Hampshire University</span> Private university near Manchester, New Hampshire, US

Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) is a private university between Manchester and Hooksett, New Hampshire, United States. The university is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education, along with national accreditation for some hospitality, health, education and business degrees. SNHU is one of the fastest-growing universities nationwide with 135,000 online students and 3,000 on campus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parker Palmer</span> American author, educator, and activist (born 1939)

Parker J. Palmer is an American author, educator, and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality and social change. He has published ten books and numerous essays and poems, and is founder and Senior Partner Emeritus of the Center for Courage and Renewal. His work has been recognized with major foundation grants, several national awards, and thirteen honorary doctorates.

<i>Inside Higher Ed</i> News website

Inside Higher Ed is an American online publication of news, opinion, resources, events and jobs in the higher education sphere. In 2022, Quad Partners, a private equity firm, sold it to Times Higher Education, itself owned by Inflexion Private Equity. It is based in Washington, D.C.

<i>Contexts</i> American sociology journal

Contexts: Understanding People in their Social Worlds is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal and an official publication of the American Sociological Association. It is designed to be a more accessible source of sociological ideas and research and has been inspired by the movement towards public sociology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William A. Darity Jr.</span> American economist (born 1953)

William A. "Sandy" Darity Jr. is an American economist and social scientist at Duke University. Darity's research spans economic history, development economics, economic psychology, and the history of economic thought, but most of his research is devoted to group-based inequality, especially with respect to race and ethnicity. His 2005 paper in the Journal of Economics and Finance established Darity as the 'founder of stratification economics.' His varied research interests have also included the trans-Atlantic slave trade, African American reparations and the economics of black reparations, and social and economic policies that affect inequities by race and ethnicity. For the latter, he has been described as "perhaps the country’s leading scholar on the economics of racial inequality."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roxane Gay</span> American writer (born 1974)

Roxane Gay is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. Gay is the author of The New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), as well as the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and the memoir Hunger (2017).

For-profit higher education in the United States refers to the commercialization and privatization of American higher education institutions. For-profit colleges have been the most recognizable for-profit institutions, and more recently with online program managers, but commercialization has been part of US higher education for centuries. Privatization of public institutions has been increasing since at least the 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sara Goldrick-Rab</span> American professor, sociologist, and author

Sara Youcha Goldrick-Rab is an American professor, sociologist, and author. Goldrick-Rab was most recently the Professor of Sociology and Medicine at Temple University until she resigned in August 2022, the Founding Director of The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, the founder and Board Secretary of Believe in Students, and the Chief Strategy Officer for Emergency Aid of Edquity. A sociologist of higher education, Goldrick-Rab's research focuses on policies that aim to reduce socioeconomic and racial inequalities. She received the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Early Career Award in 2014, the 2018 Grawemeyer Award for Education, and a Carnegie Fellowship in 2018.

Naomi Schaefer Riley is an American conservative commentator and author. Her writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, and The Washington Post, among others. At The Wall Street Journal, she covered religion, higher education, and philanthropy for the editorial page. Prior to this assignment, she founded the magazine In Character.

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education is a former academic journal, now an online magazine, for African Americans working in academia in the United States.

<i>Lower Ed</i> 2017 book by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy is a 2017 book about American for-profit colleges by sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor</span> American academic and author

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is an American academic, writer, and activist. She is a professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (2016). For this book, Taylor received the 2016 Cultural Freedom Award for an Especially Notable Book from the Lannan Foundation. She is a co-publisher of Hammer & Hope, an online magazine that began in 2023.

Financial issues facing students in the United States include the rising cost of tuition, as well as ancillaries, such as room and board, textbook and coursework costs, personal expenses, and transportation.

<i>Thick: And Other Essays</i> 2019 essay collection by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Thick: And Other Essays is a collection of essays by the American sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom. The book explores a range of topics, including black womanhood, body image, and McMillan Cottom's experience as a Southern black woman academic. Published in 2019 by The New Press, Thick was a finalist for that year's National Book Award.

Online enrollments in higher education have grown substantially, especially after the global shutdown. Convenience and flexibility is not the only explanation for this rapid growth. Universities, facing budget shortfalls, have turned to Online Program Managers, commonly known as OPMs to recruit students and build online programs. OPMs provide bundled products and services to private and public educational institutions in exchange for a revenue sharing arrangement. Universities have come to rely on these services to recruit new students, design, develop, run online programs and more.

Kishonna L. Gray is an American communication and gender studies researcher based at the University of Michigan School of Information. Gray is best known for her research on technology, gaming, race, and gender. As an expert in Women's and Communication Studies, she has written several articles for publications such as the New York Times. In the academic year 2016–2017, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Professors and Scholars Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hosted by the Department of Women's and Gender Studies and the MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing Program. She has also been a faculty visitor at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and at Microsoft Research.

For-profit colleges, also known as proprietary colleges, are post-secondary schools that rely on investors, and survive by making a profit. They include for-profit vocational and technical schools, career colleges, and predominantly online universities. For-profit colleges have frequently offered career-oriented curricula including culinary arts, business and technology, and health care. These institutions have a long history in the US, and grew rapidly from 1972 to 2009. The growth of for-profit education has been fueled by government funding as well as corporate investment, including private equity.

References

  1. ↑ McMillan Cottom, Tressie [@tressiemcphd] (October 9, 2019). "Time, it just keeps on passing. Another trip around the sun" . Retrieved January 18, 2024– via Instagram.
  2. 1 2 Jacobs, Julia (October 6, 2020). "MacArthur 'Genius' Grant Winners for 2020: The Full List". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 6, 2020. Retrieved October 6, 2020. Tressie McMillan Cottom, 43
  3. 1 2 "Author, professor, and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom joining SILS and CITAP | sils.unc.edu". sils.unc.edu. April 16, 2020. Archived from the original on June 4, 2020. Retrieved June 4, 2020.
  4. ↑ Kingsbury, Kathleen; Patrick Healy; Charlotte Greensit (March 9, 2022). "Tressie McMillan Cottom Joins The Times as an Opinion Columnist". The New York Times Company. Archived from the original on March 29, 2022. Retrieved April 11, 2022.
  5. ↑ "Tressie McMillan Cottom - MacArthur Foundation". www.macfound.org. Archived from the original on October 8, 2020. Retrieved October 6, 2020.
  6. 1 2 "Thick: And Other Essays". Publishers Weekly . November 26, 2018. Archived from the original on February 28, 2020. Retrieved November 25, 2018.
  7. ↑ Pitkin, Ryan (May 15, 2017). "Tressie McMillan Cottom Ends Book Tour Back Home in Charlotte Tonight". Creative Loafing Charlotte. Archived from the original on November 16, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  8. ↑ Murphy, Carla (September 15, 2014). "'My Feminism Starts 300 Years Ago'". Colorlines. Archived from the original on May 4, 2019. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  9. ↑ Kapsidelis, Karin (March 12, 2017). "Profit motive turns higher ed to 'Lower Ed,' VCU professor says". Richmond Times-Dispatch . Archived from the original on April 22, 2017. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  10. ↑ "NCCU Alumna Tressie McMillian Cottom '09 Honored with Prestigious MacArthur Foundation 'Genius Grant'". www.nccu.edu. Archived from the original on February 7, 2022. Retrieved February 7, 2022.
  11. ↑ Bell, Kia C. (March 28, 2017). "Alumna Authors Book About Higher Education". NCCU News. North Carolina Central University. Archived from the original on August 23, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  12. ↑ "Tressie McMillan Cottom - UC Davis Center for Poverty Research". UC Davis Center for Poverty Research. Archived from the original on September 28, 2019. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
  13. ↑ Crawford, Kate (March 13, 2014). "Welcoming the SMC Interns for 2014". Microsoft Research. Archived from the original on June 4, 2020. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  14. ↑ "Counter Narrative". Slate . Archived from the original on August 23, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  15. ↑ "Commencement 2015: Dissertations showcase original scholarship". Emory News Center. Emory University. May 8, 2015. Archived from the original on December 25, 2019. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  16. ↑ "Sociology Welcomes New Faculty Member–Tressie McMillan Cottom". VCU Sociology News. Virginia Commonwealth University. January 13, 2015. Archived from the original on August 23, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  17. ↑ "Tressie McMillan Cottom: Ethics and Governance of AI". Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Archived from the original on May 11, 2020. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  18. ↑ Examples of coverage:
  19. ↑ Korn, Jenny (June 20, 2017). "Writing A Book In And Of Real Life: An interview with Tressie McMillan Cottom". HASTAC. Archived from the original on August 22, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  20. 1 2 McMillan Cottom, Tressie (May 29, 2014). "No, college isn't the answer. Reparations are". Washington Post . Archived from the original on July 25, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  21. 1 2 Cottom, Tressie McMillan (February 19, 2018). "The Real Threat To Campuses Isn't 'PC Culture.' It's Racism". Huffington Post. Archived from the original on June 16, 2018. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
  22. 1 2 McMillan Cottom, Tressie (July 29, 2017). "How We Make Black Girls Grow Up Too Fast". The New York Times . Archived from the original on August 11, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  23. ↑ Polgreen, Lydia (January 18, 2018). "Introducing HuffPost Opinion And HuffPost Personal". HuffPost . Archived from the original on August 21, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2018.; "Masthead". Dissent . Archived from the original on January 21, 2019. Retrieved August 21, 2018.
  24. 1 2 Goldstein, Dana (March 7, 2017). "The Troubling Appeal of Education at For-Profit Schools". The New York Times . Archived from the original on July 25, 2018. Retrieved August 21, 2018.
  25. ↑ Kamenetz, Anya (February 28, 2017). "To This Scholar, For-Profit Colleges Are 'Lower Ed'". National Public Radio. Archived from the original on July 25, 2018. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
  26. 1 2 Foley, Nadirah Farah (2017). "Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy". Harvard Educational Review. 87 (4): 585–588. doi: 10.17763/1943-5045-87.4.585 . S2CID   260273975. Archived from the original on July 25, 2018. Retrieved July 25, 2018.
  27. ↑ Rios, Edwin (February 28, 2017). "This woman knows how bad for-profit colleges are. She used to sell them". Mother Jones . Archived from the original on September 13, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  28. 1 2 Reed, Matt (February 19, 2017). "Lower Ed: A Review". Inside Higher Ed . Archived from the original on July 25, 2018. Retrieved August 21, 2018.
  29. ↑ "Tressie McMillan Cottom - Investigating For-Profit Colleges in "Lower Ed" - Extended Interview - The Daily Show with Trevor Noah". Comedy Central. Archived from the original on July 25, 2018. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
  30. ↑ Rees, Jonathan (November 8, 2017). "The Wrong Kind of Famous". The Chronicle of Higher Education . Archived from the original on August 23, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  31. ↑ Quintana, Chris (July 18, 2017). "'If There's an Organized Outrage Machine, We Need an Organized Response'". The Chronicle of Higher Education . Archived from the original on August 30, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  32. ↑ Willis, Samantha (July 1, 2019). "Thinking While Black". Richmond Magazine. Archived from the original on October 23, 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
  33. 1 2 "2020 ASA Award recipients". American Sociological Association. Archived from the original on January 16, 2020. Retrieved January 15, 2020.
  34. ↑ Skallerup Bessette, Lee (March 20, 2017). "Lower Ed: A (Brief) Review". The Chronicle of Higher Education . Archived from the original on August 22, 2018. Retrieved August 20, 2018.
  35. ↑ "How For-Profit Colleges Sell 'Risky Education' To The Most Vulnerable". Fresh Air. National Public Radio. March 17, 2017. Archived from the original on August 13, 2018. Retrieved August 21, 2018.
  36. ↑ Seamster, Louise (April 3, 2018). "All Credentials aren't Created Equal". Contexts. 17 (1): 74–75. doi: 10.1177/1536504218766541 .
  37. ↑ Warner, John (December 27, 2018). "The author you need to read now: Tressie McMillan Cottom". Chicago Tribune . Archived from the original on January 8, 2019. Retrieved January 8, 2019.
  38. ↑ "Thick: And Other Essays". Kirkus Reviews . November 13, 2018. Archived from the original on January 9, 2019. Retrieved January 8, 2019.
  39. ↑ Stoner, Rebecca (January 18, 2019). "Tressie McMillan Cottom Seeks to Write 'Powerful Stories That Become a Problem for Power'". Pacific Standard . Archived from the original on January 19, 2019. Retrieved January 18, 2019.
  40. ↑ Acker, Camille (February 12, 2019). "Five Essay Collections by Women of Color". The New York Times . Archived from the original on February 12, 2019. Retrieved February 12, 2019.
  41. ↑ Alter, Alexandra (October 8, 2019). "National Book Awards Names 2019 Finalists". The New York Times . Archived from the original on October 8, 2019. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
  42. ↑ "Awards". Sociologists for Women in Society. November 8, 2017. Archived from the original on July 25, 2018. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
  43. ↑ McNeill, Brian (April 29, 2019). "Cottom to receive prestigious early career award from American Sociological Association". Virginia Commonwealth University News. Archived from the original on June 8, 2019. Retrieved June 8, 2019.
  44. ↑ "Discover the Winners of Adweek's 2019 Podcast of the Year Awards". December 9, 2019. Retrieved December 9, 2022.
  45. ↑ Cottom, Tressie McMillan (February 22, 2017). "For-Profit Colleges Thrive Off of Inequality". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on July 25, 2018. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
  46. ↑ McMillan Cottom, Tressie (November 6, 2024). "The Way Harris Lost Will Be Her Legacy". The New York Times. Retrieved November 11, 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.