Date of Submission

6-24-2019

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Degree

Doctor of Education

Department

Education

Keywords

Private education, social justice, student loan default, neoliberalism, emancipation, ethical engagement

Abstract

No matter how lightly you tread, you can not cross a beach without leaving footprints, nor without carrying a little sand away with you. Open systems theory states that an organization has permeable boundaries “dependant on its environment for survival and will go out of existence unless it is actively attended to” (Burke, 2011, p. 61), and it is with this consideration that the tenets of social justice are understood to be a responsibility of all entities, as “the public” is not a target group that can be somehow isolated so as to be impacted by only public administrators. Private colleges in Canada benefit by their constituents having access to public funds, and therefore government regulations restrict how private investors can profit from this relationship. However, as with any imposed control system, it is only as good as its policing; the alternative is a system that is sanctioned by those it is meant to control.

This organizational improvement plan is an exploration into change that is intended to ensure that the social justice imperative embodied in following an admission process that supports an ethical approach to student contracting is fully adopted. Commitment to this behavior, the author argues, supports organizational goals related to student persistence, and improved student loan default rates. These goals are intended to have a positive impact on the consequences of problem debt, to contribute to regional infrastructure and economic growth by increasing workplace intelligence, and to a reduction of the social services burden.

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