Online Master's Degree MS in Higher Education Administration

Candidates seeking to become degreed higher education administrators must first understand the historical, philosophical, and social influences that have built America's concept of higher education and articulate their own personal philosophy of higher education. Emphasis will be placed on the reciprocal relationship between higher education models and their socio-historical contexts.

Through the use of contextualized cases representative of the technological, demographic, and intellectual shifts that have influenced higher education's evolving role in the twenty-first century, candidates will examine the issues facing higher education today and link their judgments to historical foundations. Candidates will create alignments between current issues in higher education and how they influence the twenty-first-century student.

This course will further candidates' ability to methodically apply empirically based, data-centric approaches to inform institutional decision making across multiple university sectors. Through contextualized, authentic experiences, candidates will analyze, evaluate, and assess programs using contemporary technologies and develop evidence-based approaches to meet desired outcomes. Candidates will be required to justify the empirically based process by which they reached their programmatic decisions. Specific modes of inquiry driving this course will be strongly represented in subsequent course work.

This course will explore the theories and processes of higher education program evaluation. Candidates will - within the context of a university's mission, strategic goals, and objectives - learn necessary skills to methodically evaluate higher education programs. Candidates will analyze given sets of case-based data and offer evidence and research based justifications for programmatic changes. Project management concepts and tools will be applied throughout the course.

With an examination of the key laws, policies, and concepts specific to higher education in the United States, candidates will gain a sense of higher education law's complexity and how law has assumed a greater role in establishing patterns, modes of conduct, and equitable procedures in an attempt to assure the rights and responsibilities of administrators, faculty members, staff, and students in the institutional context.

This course will address the data-centric enrollment management process within higher education, including how to attract, admit, and retain students. Candidates will examine the tools for effective admissions marketing, predicting admissions yields, and assessing how financial aid influences enrollment behavior. Candidates will gain the evidence-based skills necessary to understand the tactics for successful onboarding and continued retention of students, as well as the structures and approaches aimed at improving student achievement and persistence.

This course will require candidates to empirically make sense of quantitative data sets related to financial management of an institution. Candidates will manipulate tuition and fee revenue models and make justifiable, quantitatively-based budgetary decisions regarding how those decisions map onto given institution's strategic initiatives and mission. Through the use of fiscal management models, candidates will how account for how government appropriations, financial aid regulations, large grants, and investment income influence these decisions.

This course explores the responsibility of innovative - and accountable - change agents who must manage institutional responses to major external or internal forces. Candidates will consider how to apply empirical data and quality improvement principles to planning. Candidates will demonstrate how strategic approaches may be applied to successful navigation of individual, collaborative, and organizational structures. Through the examination of effective communication strategies, consensus building, and negotiation candidates will focus on creative problem solving through innovative approaches and models related to the administration of institutions of higher education in the 21st century.

This capstone course is the culminating experience for the M.S. in Higher Education Administration program. The aim of the capstone is to assess students' ability to synthesize and integrate the knowledge and skills they have developed throughout their coursework, rather than introducing new concepts. This course is structured to support student success in fulfilling program requirements.