Racially Designed Discretion: Navigating Advising and Information Access at a Southwestern Minority Serving Institution

• In Event: Power, Privilege, and Positionality in Higher Education

Abstract

My research seeks to answer a central organizational paradox: Why do significant graduation gaps based on race, gender, and first-generation college status persist at Southwestern Minority Serving Institution (SMSI), despite its extensive network of advising systems? This project addresses a fundamental mechanism of social stratification and economic mobility. A college degree is a primary determinant of lifetime earnings and social standing, and a key gateway to the socioeconomic middle class. At Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), however, evidence suggests bureaucratic advising systems meant to facilitate degree completion may act as critical sites where social inequality is organizationally reproduced. Because MSI designations come with substantial direct and indirect financial benefits, this puzzle is situated within the broader context of the systemic underfunding of public universities, which has been shown to have severe racial consequences and push universities toward a service-based model that emphasizes the privatization of risk and harms marginalized students. This paper analyzes the formal organization of advising systems at a Southwestern Minority Serving Institution to illuminate how institutional design and individual discretion interact to mediate student opportunities and disadvantages. At the meso-level, I examine the interplay of power dynamics, privilege, and social positionality within and between SMSI advising systems. The three key elements of the institutional design that affect how advisors do their jobs are (1) the complex hierarchical system of advising at SMSI, (2) uneven resource distribution, and (3) organizational silos.

Author

• Lacey S Hites, University of New Mexico-Albuquerque