Professionalizing Student Affairs: Five Tensions

Scholars and practitioners have discussed the professionalization of student affairs almost since the birth of the field in 19th century. Professionalizing a field can improve its status and better serve members of an occupation and their clients (Pavalko, 1988). The purpose of this paper is to identify points of tension that illustrate efforts to professionalize and barriers to achieve professional status. As scholars and practitioners of student affairs, we offer five tensions: lack of specialized knowledge, lack of unified purpose and focus, divided professional community, diversity of student affairs credentialing, and lack of autonomy for student affairs practitioners at both the individual and organizational levels. We conclude with implications for practice and research.