A Research Of Student Affairs In American Higher Education

Student affairs play an important role of higher education. In this article, the author takes American colleges as examples to explain the development of student affairs in the way of narrating and discussing the issue.Student affairs of American colleges derived from the early higher education, from merging with academic affairs to departing of it, from the "loco parentis" paradigm to the "student personnel" paradigm, and then formally declared its modern establishment in 1937 with the publishing of "student personnel point of view". From that moment on, student affairs division went further with the pace of American society, experienced the World War two and then saw the civil right movements. Relatively, student affairs theme also changed from tagging with "student service" to "student development". During this period, American student affairs division used psychology and sociology as tools to make itself more and more professional and finally came to the guideline of their practices. In 1990's American student affairs divisions encountered lots of problems and had to focus on the student learning, with this focus, they relied more and contributed more to students learning in the way of merging again with academic affairs.