We Were Never Meant to Stay: Guardianship and the Institutional Design Behind the Attrition of Minoritized Student Affairs Professionals

<p>Research on student affairs professionals often explains attrition through burnout, stress, or work–life imbalance. While these explanations document workplace pressures, they frequently privatize departure, obscuring the institutional logics and affective economies of higher education. This qualitative study explores attrition of minoritized student affairs professionals (MSAPs) by situating their experiences within systems of institutional governance, affective labor, and structural inequality. Drawing on postcolonial and critical affect theory, the study develops guardianship as a conceptual framework to highlight how professionals internalize institutional expectations.</p> <p>Using narrative inquiry, the study engaged nine former MSAPs who exited student affairs within the previous five years. Data were generated through individual interviews, story circles, and participant-led audio reflection. Analysis examined participants' retrospective accounts of entry into the field, institutional engagement, and eventual departure.</p> <p>Findings reveal a recurring pattern in which MSAPs enter student affairs through identification with students and commitments to justice-oriented work. Participants described carrying forward a remembered version of themselves as students, conceptualized as the carried student, sustaining belief in the profession and deepening responsibility toward students who mirror their past experiences. Interpreted through the guardianship framework, institutions mobilize this identification to reinforce expectations for care, advocacy, and emotional availability while constraining professionals' authority to alter institutional conditions.</p> <p>Attrition therefore emerges not as burnout or disengagement but as a patterned outcome of institutional design that relies on justice-oriented labor while limiting professionals' capacity to enact structural change. This study demonstrates how institutional dependence on justice-oriented labor sustains commitment even as it renders that commitment increasingly untenable.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD Education for Social Justice

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation: USD Users Only

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Learning and Teaching

Year dc:date.available

2026

Author dc:creator

• Chaloult, Rae

• Critical Affect
• Postcolonial
• Guardianship
• Minoritized Student Affairs Professionals
• Higher Education

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digital.sandiego.edu/dissertations/1115

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digital.sandiego.edu:dissertations-2133