Royel M. Johnson, '10 LAS, '11 Ed.M. EPOL, has been appointed editor of The Review of Higher Education, the flagship journal of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE).
“The Review of Higher Education has been a space where rigorous scholarship meets real questions about who has access to higher education and why,” said Johnson. “I look forward to stewarding that legacy while pushing the field to grapple with the systems that form a student’s academic trajectory leading up to a college campus.”
The appointment follows an open, national search conducted by the ASHE Board of Directors. Johnson assumes the role as the journal approaches its 50th anniversary, marking five decades as one of the field’s leading venues for scholarship on higher education. His five-year term begins November 2026.
Johnson is Associate Professor of Higher Education and Social Work at the University of Southern California. He serves as Co-Director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education.
Johnson’s research examines access, equity, and belonging in higher education, with attention to how youth-serving systems, including child welfare and the criminal legal system, shape students’ pathways into and through College and how institutions can evolve to better support them. He brings editorial leadership to his new role, having recently served as co-editor of Educational Research (2023–2026) with the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
