"In Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy, Tressie McMillan Cottom is at her very best--rigorous, incisive, empathetic, and witty. Lower Ed is a definitive accounting of the for-profit college phenomenon, who benefits from such schools and who is preyed upon. McMillan Cottom shares some sobering realities about for-profit education but her sharp intelligence, throughout, makes this book compelling, unforgettable, and deeply necessary." Roxane Gay
About Me
Tressie McMillan Cottom, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and faculty associate with Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
Her research on higher education, work and technological change in the new economy has been supported by the Microsoft Research Network’s Social Media Collective, The Kresge Foundation, the American Educational Research Association and the UC Davis Center for Poverty Research.
Millions List, a leader in publishing, named her book “Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy” one of the most anticipated non-fiction books of 2016. She has published on race/class/gender, education, and technology in the new economy.
McMillan Cottom is also co-editor of two academic books: “Digital Sociologies” from Policy Press and “For Profit U” from Palgrave MacMillan. She speaks extensively, including recent invitations to The White House, South Africa, New Zealand, and Italy.
Her public scholarship has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, and The Atlantic to name a few.
She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in race, theory and digital sociology.
You can email Tressie McMillan Cottom at tressiemc at gmail.com or tmcottom at vcu.edu. If you’re thinking of inviting her to your event, thank you. This may help make that happen.
Recent Posts
2016 happened. Boy did it happen. It’s that time of year when people I admire start reflecting on their year. I belong to many tribes and each has its own flavor on end-of-year assessments....
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By January 2016 I had made peace with the idea of a President Donald Trump. It was a strange statement for a black woman, a sociologist, a professor. I would go on to...
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President-elect Donald Trump ran on a fundamentally racist platform. President-elect Donald Trump promulgated the idea that Mexicans are rapists, blacks are trapped in inner cities, Muslims are terrorists and that America could only be...
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I was in the middle of a series on the theory of credentialism and Lower Ed when it became time to decorate around here for the book releases. The next two installments are written,...
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I have watched many cities burn over the past two years. I cried over Ferguson. I cried over Baltimore. But there’s nothing like seeing your hometown on social media with a hashtag. I don’t...
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ITT Technical Institutes is gone, just like that. A summary: In the wake of devastating federal sanctions, officials from Carmel-based ITT Educational Services Inc. announced Tuesday that all ITT Technical Institute campuses will be closing. In...
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