She writes from the analytical perspective of intersectionality. Public persona īefore the publication of her book Lower Ed, McMillan Cottom was known primarily as an essayist and academic expert on issues of inequality, higher education, and race. In 2020, she left Virginia Commonwealth University to join the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was awarded tenure and promoted to the rank of associate professor in 2019. In 2015 McMillan Cottom was appointed as an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. She earned her PhD in sociology from Emory University in 2015, with a dissertation on the legitimacy of for-profit higher education institutions. She also wrote the biweekly 'Counter Narrative' column for Slate magazine. at Emory University, McMillan Cottom worked as a visiting fellow at the University of California, Davis Center for Poverty Research and as a Microsoft Research Social Media Collective intern. from North Carolina Central University, a public HBCU, in English and political science. In 2009, McMillan Cottom received her B.A. Before completing her undergraduate degree, McMillan Cottom worked as an enrollment officer at a technical college, a job that would inform her later research and her first book. Her mother was a member of the Black Panther Party in Winston-Salem. McMillan Cottom was born in Harlem and raised in Winston-Salem and Charlotte, North Carolina. North Carolina Central University, where McMillan Cottom earned her BA In 2020, McMillan Cottom was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of her work 'at the confluence of race, gender, education, and digital technology.' Early life and education She is frequently quoted in print and television media as an academic expert in inequality and American higher education. McMillan Cottom is the author of Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy and Thick: And Other Essays, a co-editor of For-Profit Universities and Digital Sociologies, an essayist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and co-host of the podcast Hear to Slay with author Roxane Gay. She was formerly an associate professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and a faculty associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. She is also an opinion columnist at The New York Times.

She is currently an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science (SILS), and is also an affiliate of the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP) at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an American writer, sociologist, and professor.

Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy.

Lower ed by tressie mcmillan cottom