One Size Does Not Fit All

by Kathleen Manning, Jillian Kinzie, John Schuh

In the second edition of this influential book, leading scholars Kathleen Manning, Jillian Kinzie, and John H. Schuh advocate an original approach by presenting 11 models of student affairs practice, including both traditional and innovative programs. Based on a qualitative, multi-institutional research project, One Size Does Not Fit All explores a variety of policies, practices, and programs that contribute to increased student engagement, success, and learning. This book is a must read for all higher education administrators and student affairs professionals. New to this Revised

Genres: Education

256 pages, Paperback

First published February 22, 2006

Reviews

[Ian Fournie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book did a good job introducing the various models of students affairs practice. I read it for my intro to university administration class and it gave me a good perspective on how various colleges/universities operate.

[Randy Mahoney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for my intro. To student affairs grad school course. I really like this as it helped me understand more of how college can be structured, whether centralized, decentralized, or more employer focused. Recommended for anyone looking to work in a higher education setting.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The joy of a five hour flight delay is more time to finish homework books in the (VERY COLD) DFW airport 🙃

This is another textbook whose author is a researcher in my grad program! She’s coming to speak w/ my class this week so I had to finish it in time lol

[Carm · Rating 5 out of 5]

I continue to refer to concepts featured throughout this book every day as a higher education practitioner since the day it was assigned to me in my masters program. As it is easy to get into a prescription with how we approach student development, it is an important book to read.

[Teresa Raetz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains some helpful descriptions of commonly found environments within divisions of student affairs. It's well written and expands on the work of the DEEP project. My main quibbles are a lack of description, use of the term "models" to describe their observations, and a focus on elite students.

The book would have benefitted from a lot more description and examples of the specific types that were being described. There was almost no explanation at all of how the organizational structure worked to help create the systems being described.

Also, the authors used the term "models" of student affairs practice when, to me, what they were really describing were types of divisional culture. A much more comprehensive description of the various factors that contributed to the type would be necessary for the types to be models.

One particularly useful part included in each section was a description of the type of college and student population that each culture was best suited to. It's just too bad that most or all of the innovative cultures/models presented work best in small liberal arts colleges. Since the bulk of college students now attend community colleges or similar types of institutions, the book would have been much stronger if they'd provided models that work with a more diverse set of students. Ignoring the majority of college students in favor of describing those at more elite institutions is typical of most student affairs intellectual work and I find it frustrating.

Even so, there is good information here. The book is well written and the DEEP project has added to our understanding of how colleges can be structured to engage students.

[Jared · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have known about this book for a while now but just finally got around to reading it. I'm glad I did. I found it to be well written and provide a nice overview of student affairs organizational structure. I wish I had read this while working on my dissertation. It would have come in handy.