Professionalization in student affairs?

As student affairs perspectives and practices have spread across the world, those employed in student support positions have questioned how they should best prepare for their roles. The new edited collection of articles, Towards Professionalization of Student Affairs Across the Globe, raises questions about the purpose of professionalization and how it is unfolding in different regions. The Student Affairs Now podcast with the editors provides summary points from the book.

A repeated message throughout this collection is that professionalization has merits but must be pursued within the unique cultural context of each higher education institution. And, increasing professionalization is dependent on capacity building at the local level that draws educators into these roles instead of erecting barriers that exclude them. The essential questions of "for what purpose" and "to whose benefit" must be addressed in looking at a field that rests in the ambiguous "third space" of many institutional organization charts.

Steve Mintz' Inside Higher Education thinking outside the box piece reinforced the "third space" notion by asserting that organization divisions of academic and student affairs might be dismantled. Mintz identified the benefits of linking extracurricular activities to academics, increasing faculty involvement, and aligning academic and career advising to dismantling the bureaucracy of these divisions. Such a proposal challenges notions of expertise and professional preparation that may threaten some student affairs educators but it's actually consistent with the thinking of some early visionaries of student affairs work.