Status: Upcoming

Community colleges enroll nearly half of all postsecondary students in the United States. Yet, enrollment processes at community colleges receive little attention, in part because they are considered “open-access” institutions. As part of a larger project that re-conceptualizes higher education access to encompass the entirety of the enrollment “funnel,” this presentation will analyze how enrollment technologies such as customer relationship management (CRM) and student information system (SIS) tools shape the work of community college enrollment professionals. In a case study of enrollment processes at Suburban Community College (SCC), located outside of Chicago, I analyze interviews with SCC personnel, observations of enrollment-related work sessions, meetings, and presentations, and related artifacts such as internal enrollment data dashboards, CRM and SIS tools, and strategic planning documents. I find that the introduction of enrollment-related technologies facilitates targeted efforts to provide information to prospective students, aid students in completing enrollment steps, and monitor enrollment efforts over time. However, I also find that the implementation and maintenance of these technologies requires financial investment and skilled enrollment systems management, both of which can exceed the limits of community college capacity. By highlighting these tensions, this project contributes to research and policymaking efforts focused on higher education access.

Facilitated by remote work normalization and the expanding gig economy, multiple jobholding (MJH)—holding more than one paid position simultaneously—is experiencing marked growth. This growth has expanded the demography of multiple job holders, notably for income level, resulting in two research perspectives: a traditional assumption that MJH is an unfortunate necessity forced upon the economically vulnerable or a newer celebration of MJH as empowering “side hustles” offering supplemental income and fulfillment. To reconcile these perspectives, we surveyed workers (n=254) on whether they actively desire MJH, whether finances alone drive that preference, and what else drives its appeal. Results show workers across demographics genuinely prefer MJH, beyond economic need. While compensation matters, all workers value MJH for its flexibility and autonomy. Uniquely, Gen Z shows significantly higher interest in using MJH to build distinct professional identities (p < 0.05). These findings suggest an emerging trend toward a “Career Mosaic”—a deliberate construction of professional identity through curated work experiences that together express a fuller self. This shift from linear career progression to multifaceted composition has major implications for employment policy, workforce development, HR technology, and organizational strategy—all designed for a single-employer paradigm that no longer fits evolving work relationships.

As we move into the next era of work, technology is leading to profound changes in how work gets done, the nature of employment relationships is rapidly evolving, and there is widespread concern about how AI will impact or displace workers. This talk will address these concerns from a scientific perspective, reviewing research on a range of factors that predict career success and job satisfaction.

We reexamine the value of college, utilizing a seven-year (2014–2021) longitudinal interview study at a public, research-focused university. Previous work often measures college’s value through career status and earnings. We dig deeper, considering 29 recent STEM graduates’ perceptions of major-career alignment, whether and how college prepared them for post-college life, and how they assess the value of their BA/BS degrees. Beyond coursework, we assess how respondents perceive institutional prestige, resources, and other supports colleges often tout. Our nuanced analysis considers variation within STEM disciplines, and by social factors including gender, race/ethnicity, and family income, to show how “STEM” experiences differ by social location. Our longitudinal analysis attends to nuance in another way—by considering today’s dynamic career trajectories, including job and career track changes. Finally, we consider whether and how Covid-19 disrupted career-seekers’ trajectories. Throughout, we investigate the value of “hard” (discipline-specific) and “soft” (portable communication and interpersonal) skills for STEM graduates (Matteson et al. 2016). Our findings challenge the notion that portable skills are “soft” in any way; for our respondents, they provided a widely accepted hard currency in a job market staggered by upheaval in formerly “safe” disciplines (e.g., computer science) and a global pandemic.

Generative AI tools can undermine the informational value of grades by performing graded course tasks. I analyze the impact of AI on grade distributions across more than 500,000 grades at a large research university from 2018 to 2025 using a difference-in-differences design. Courses with more AI-exposed tasks, such as writing and coding, saw substantial grade increases after ChatGPT’s release: the share of A grades rose by 13 percentage points, or about 30% relative to the 2022 baseline. These increases were larger where homework carried greater weight, consistent with AI substituting for student work rather than broad learning gains from AI.