“Whispers and Concerns About the Lawyers Taking Over”: How Student Affairs Professionals Think About the Growing Need for Legal Education

Decisions in student affairs often require the integration of multiple knowledge bases (O’Brien, 2018). Although learning and development have historically been core values of the profession (Evans & Reason, 2001), legal demands on student affairs professionals have grown with increasing responsibility for compliance in areas like Title IX and campus speech policies (Kaplin & Lee, 2014; Lake, 2011). While guidelines for relevant legal training exist (American College Personnel Association & National Association of Student Personnel Administrators [ACPA & NASPA], 2015), student affairs professionals come from a variety of educational and professional backgrounds (Wesaw & Sponsler, 2014). Using a focused reanalysis of data derived from a constructivist grounded theory study of legal reasoning in student affairs, we explored how practitioners think about their own training in the law as well as how they perceive colleagues with advanced legal training (e.g., law degrees, participation in continuing education).

LITERATURE REVIEW

The vast majority of student affairs professionals receive their masters-level and doctoral-level training in higher education or student affairs programs (Wesaw & Sponsler, 2014). Professional standards for these programs suggest they should provide legal training to graduates but also note the field’s long-running emphasis on student learning and development (ACPA & NASPA, 2015). Although empirical knowledge about legal education and reasoning within the student affairs profession is scant, the limited literature that is available emphasizes the potential incommensurability of legal, developmental, and social justice perspectives in student affairs work (summarized in Ryder, Hastings, Kimball, & Slauzis, 2018). In fact, two of the most important such studies theorize that the “creeping legalism” within student affairs—a focus on following rules rather than on student outcomes—can undermine effective practice (Dannells, 1997, p. 69; Gehring, 2001). However, competency framings of student affairs work do not reconcile potentially contradictory professional imperatives—instead suggesting the alignment of goals across competencies even as empirical evidence suggests divergence in how frequently competencies are used as well as how often they are used in tandem with one another (O’Brien, 2018). As yet, no one has examined how the tension between law, learning, and social justice documented by Dannells (1997) and Gehring (2001) gets resolved in practice.

METHOD

We used semistructured interviews to explore how student affairs professionals think about the law. We adopted a constructivist grounded theory perspective due to our interest in capturing participant meaning making as well as the scant empirical literature base related to the legal reasoning of student affairs professionals. From the outset, our study included questions such as: (a) You’ve told me a bit about how you think about the law in your work. How did you come to think about it in this way? and (b) What legal training or resources have you found helpful? Midway through the project, we noted participants often described the legal training of others. Thereafter, we began a focused reanalysis and added questions about why participants believed particular administrators possessed legal expertise, how they felt about that expertise, and the training they would need to advance their careers.

We used theoretic sampling to recruit participants based on factors likely to be related to the legal reasoning of participants (Charmaz, 2014). Specifically, we utilized targeted outreach to geographically proximate student affairs professionals as well as postings to online forums to vary participants by institution (14 different four-year institutions), career stage (8 entry-level, 7 mid-level, and 6 senior-level), role (7 different functional areas), and education (primarily including participants with higher education or student affairs degrees but also 2 with law degrees).

We undertook a focused reanalysis of existing and new data. To do so, we used constant comparative analysis (Charmaz, 2014). Therein, we recoded all transcripts from the standpoint of our newly identified focus— generating new open, axial, and thematic codes. As we undertook this reanalysis, we used peer debriefing, triangulation, and discrepant case analysis to enhance trustworthiness.

FINDINGS

Increasing legal demands require student affairs professionals to balance legalistic and learning-centered approaches to students (Ryder et al., 2018...