ABSTRACT
The broader theme of the American higher education system and some important issues relating to it is covered in Chapter 2. On the one hand, there were some communicative agents who had wanted to know about its formal rules, such as campus-wide rules and regulations on sexual or racial harassment and discrimination, both students’ and faculty’s integrity in their academic work, and both campus-wide and department-level policies and standards on academic standing or degree completion and job descriptions for graduate assistants. On the other hand, there were also some communicative agents who had expressed their interest in learning its informal rules, such as the power of American university professors and the importance of academic research in American graduate schools. Specifically, some communicative guiders who responded to any explicit or implicit topic about formal or informal rules of the American higher education system, its American colleges and universities, or its graduate school or program have been called institutional guiders. The main role these institutional guiders performed is the same as what communicative guiders generally took on: the sharing of experiences, content analysis (evaluations and explanations), and/or advice (judgments and suggestions).
