Date of Award

12-1-2003

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational Leadership

Abstract

The development of a discipline is reflected in its literature. Higher education is a fairly young discipline, as shown by the large amount of its literature beginning in the 1970s or later. Studying the literature of a discipline reveals various aspects of its development, and gives those engaged in its development an assessment of what is being done and who is doing it at a particular point in time. Using bibliometrics, or the literature as data, this dissertation examined articles in eight selected higher education scholarly journals in 1995 and 2000 to determine characteristics of the authors producing higher education literature and characteristics of the articles themselves. A total of 474 articles were examined. These characteristics included the authors’ sex, geographic locations, academic positions held at their institutions, the departments where they worked, and the institutions they represented by Carnegie Classification. Characteristics of the articles included subject content and the research methodologies employed in the articles.

Among many findings, this study found that males published more than females in all categories, except when authors resided in the Pacific region of the country. Females used qualitative analysis more than males, and wrote more about minorities and women, while males wrote more about administration. Faculty used qualitative analysis more than administrators; administrators wrote more about institutional evaluation and research; while faculty wrote more about themselves (faculty), students, curriculum, minorities and women. This study also found that faculty from departments other than Education or Higher Education published more in the literature of higher education than faculty from departments of Higher Education.

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