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About the Higher Education Ph.D. Concentration

The UConn Neag School of Education’s Ph.D. in Learning, Leadership, and Education Policy offers four concentrations, one of which being Higher Education, Racial Justice, and Decolonization (HERJD). The Ph.D. program and its concentrations are designed for students interested in working in academic settings, becoming researchers, or working in other settings.

Mission

The Higher Education Racial Justice and Decolonization concentration offers students opportunities to engage in critical reflexivity and praxis related to racial justice and decolonization in higher education settings. As the globe continues to grapple with its colonial and anti-Blackness past and present, we believe that this concentration will expose students to the necessary academic and professional learning they need to be critical, anti-racist, and equity-minded scholar-practitioners. Students who graduate with this degree may work in the following areas to name a few: academic/faculty career (professoriate), policy, consulting, and administrative positions within and outside of higher education.

Goals

The Higher Education Racial Justice and Decolonization concentration will develop critical-reflexive scholar-activists that understand and can advance:

  • Critical sociocultural and organization theories that exposes how organizations and individuals who work in them reproduce structural inequities
  • Abolitionist theory that counter oppressive power structures, public and institutional policies, and procedures in order to transform higher education
  • Decolonizing approaches to higher education teaching and learning, leadership, administration, and research
  • Global/comparative higher education from multiple intersecting lens of decoloniality, indigeneity, neoliberalism, inclusion, and equity
  • Student-development with a critical/ anticolonial/ post-structural lens
  • Implementation of public policies and institutional practices that are equity-focused