Several studies have examined workplace bullying in the general population or in the K-12 student population. This book examines the manifestation of workplace bullying in American Higher Education Administration. After surveying over 175 four-year colleges and universities in an independent study, Hollis confirms that workplace bullying occurs at alarming rates in higher education. Further, this study calculates the cost of employee disengagement. Staff who have been bullied either seek to separate from an institution or mentally "check out" as a way of enduring a bully. In the midst of souring tuition costs, no organization can afford the millions of dollars lost to employee disengagement due to a bully. After gathering data through surveys and several interviews with administrators in higher education, Hollis develops a model for a healthy workplace specifically for higher education, which is also applicable to the general population. The model offers solutions for the leadership and organizational level, middle managers, and for the bullies who are seeking healthier management strategies. While this book is an academic study, the writing is accessible, reflects on popular culture at times, and considers the urgency of workplace bullying in relationship to cost, potential accreditation issues, and the personal anguish of the target. The findings and solutions are appropriate for executive leadership, middle management or anyone working in higher education.

Original study by Leah Hollis on workplace bullying in American higher education administration. Findings reveal breadth of bullying and solutions for leadership.

This important book addresses the prevalence of faculty incivility, camouflaged aggression, and the rise of an academic bully culture in higher education. The authors show how to recognize a bully culture that may form as a result of institutional norms, organizational structure, academic culture, and systemic changes. Filled with real-life examples, the book offers research-based suggestions for dealing with this disruptive and negative behavior in the academic workplace.

Defining, Locating, and Addressing Bullying in the WPA Workplace is the first volume to take up the issue of bullying in writing programs. Contributors to this collection share their personal stories and analyze varieties of collegial malevolence they have experienced as WPAs with consequences in emotional, mental, and physical health and in personal and institutional economies. Contributors of varying status in different types of programs across many kinds of institutions describe various forms of bullying, including microaggressions, incivility, mobbing, and emotional abuse. They define bullying as institutional racism, “academic systemic incivility,” a crisis of insularity, and faculty fundamentalism. They locate bullying in institutional contexts, including research institutions, small liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and writing programs and writing centers. These locations are used as points of departure to further theorize bullying and to provide clear advice about agentive responses. A culture of silence discourages discussions of this behavior, making it difficult to address abuse. This silence also normalizes patterns and cultivates the perception that bullying arises naturally. Defining, Locating, and Addressing Bullying in the WPA Workplace helps the field to name these patterns of behaviors as bullying and resist ideologies of normalcy, encouraging and empowering readers to take an active role in defining, locating, and addressing bullying in their own workplaces. Contributors: Sarah Allen, Andrea Dardello, Harry Denny, Dawn Fels, Bre Garrett, W. Gary Griswold, Amy C. Heckathorn, Aurora Matzke, Staci Perryman-Clark, Sherry Rankins-Robertson, Erec Smith

Graduate schools have faced attrition rates of approximately 50 percent for the past 40 years. They have tried to address the problem by focusing on student characteristics and by assuming that if they could make better, more informed admissions decisions, attrition rates would drop. Yet high attrition rates persist and may in fact be increasing. Leaving the Ivory Tower thus turns the issue around and asks what is wrong with the structure and process of graduate education. Based on hard evidence drawn from a survey of 816 completers and noncompleters and on interviews with noncompleters, high- and low-Ph.D productive faculty and Directors of Graduate study, this book locates the root cause of attrition in the social structure and cultural organization of graduate education.