Purpose: This study addresses the growing concern over the global decline in academic freedom, a topic that has drawn increasing attention from academics, policy makers, and the broader public. Although scholars have speculated about a connection between the rise of populism and diminishing academic freedom, empirical investigations into the relationship have been lacking. This research fills that gap. Research Methods/Approach: Using a historical data set spanning 1946 to 2019, this article examines the relationship between populist political support and academic freedom. Employing fixed-effects models to investigate patterns over time, this analysis assesses whether an increase in populist support is associated with a decline in academic freedom across Asia and Europe. Findings: The analysis confirms a decline in academic freedom over the past decade across 45 countries. Further, the article finds that increasing populist support is a significant predictor of reduced academic freedom. Implications: Populism is on the rise around the world, making these findings especially timely. Because academic freedom is essential to research, the proper functioning of universities, and the ability of scholars to speak openly on issues of public concern, the results have important implications for both academic work and public policy.
Purpose: Although many states offer financial aid through grant programs, these awards often carry merit-based requirements to retain the award. In this study, I examine whether the loss of state grant aid perpetuates disadvantages for racially minoritized students across public institutional contexts. Research Methods/Approach: Using administrative data on undergraduates who first enrolled with the HOPE Scholarship in Georgia, I leverage the grade point average (GPA) renewal threshold to employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, comparing students just above and just below the 3.0 GPA cutoff at the 30-credit checkpoint. I examine heterogeneity by race/ethnicity, income status, and institutional cost across three cohorts of first-time students who enrolled between 2013 and 2015. Findings: The results show no detectable effects of aid loss at the aggregate level, but low-income students of color attending the state's most expensive institutions face a lower probability of completing a bachelor's degree after losing aid. Implications: This study demonstrates how losing access to grant aid has differential consequences across groups and institutional contexts, perpetuating racial inequalities and exacerbating stratified trajectories in higher education. The findings underscore the need for state grant aid programs that more equitably distribute support to the students most vulnerable to the consequences of aid loss.
Purpose: Teacher education (TE) programs with commitments to racial equity face a dilemma: how to socialize teachers into the profession while preparing them not to see themselves as part of an unjust system. This article examines how teacher candidates form professional identities and experience demoralization within racialized organizational contexts. Research Methods/Approach: Bridging theories of teacher professional identity and racialized organizations, this interview-based study draws on semistructured interviews with 38 teacher candidates across three TE programs in the United States. Findings: I surface a typology of four professional identity types-workers, intellectuals, idealists, and professionals-that vary in the degree to which each type of teacher views teaching as intellectual or moral work. Only teachers with moral commitments experienced demoralization, and every professional integrity violation was rooted in racialized organizational conditions in both K-12 field placements and TE programs themselves. For these teachers, learning to teach in a racialized society is morally fraught work, and subversion becomes a central dimension of sustaining their professional practice. Implications: Teacher demoralization is not an individual deficit but a structural outcome of how racialized systems organize teachers' work. TE programs committed to equity must prepare teachers to navigate and, sometimes, subvert the inequitable realities they encounter, rather than treating attrition and disillusionment as personal failings.
Purpose: Undergraduates are an important yet understudied pool of prospective teachers who could help to alleviate teacher shortages faced by schools across the United States. This article explores the degree to which undergraduates at one public flagship university are interested in a teaching career, the factors they value when choosing a career, and how they perceive teaching along those factors. Research Methods/Approach: Our mixed-methods study was guided by a conceptual framework grounded in expectancy-value theory. We conducted a survey of undergraduates at the University of Maryland and follow-up focus groups with respondents who reported some degree of interest in teaching, whom we term undergraduate prospective teachers (UPTs). Findings: We find that, for the many undergraduates in our sample who had some degree of interest in teaching, all career attributes in our conceptual framework (e.g., job availability and security, salary) were at least somewhat important. Although UPTs had favorable perceptions of the degree to which teaching offered some of these attributes (e.g., social contribution), we more often identified areas of misalignment between the attributes UPTs value and their perceptions of teaching (e.g., salary, workload). Implications: Our findings point to several policies that could address misalignments between UPTs' career values and perceptions of teaching, including raising salaries, improving work environments, and mitigating preparation costs. They also suggest the importance of better communicating about these policy changes and existing areas of alignment through strategies such as marketing campaigns and informational interventions.
