Study map · comps preparation · June 2026

The seam: governance, prior learning, and the inhabited institution

Two plates from one argument. Plate I is the theoretical architecture — one frame, one object, three sensitizing concepts. Plate II is the literature funnel — four clusters, each stopping where the next begins, narrowing to the gap this study occupies. Select any element to rehearse it.

PLATE I

Theoretical architecture

How the study looks, what it looks at, what it looks for — and what it deliberately leaves at the boundary.

Inhabited institutionalism The integrating frame — how the study looks Governance configuration THE OBJECT · SQ1 Formal authority Informal authority Information asymmetry MECHANISM · SQ3 Sensemaking ENACTMENT · SQ2 Legitimacy ENACTMENT · SQ2 Institutional response Emergent trajectories, open to revision Adopt Absorb Stall Peripheralize Institutional logics Context, not a pillar Principal–agent theory Construct kept, apparatus declined HELD AT THE BOUNDARY OF THE FRAMEWORK
PLATE II

The literature funnel

Each cluster asks a narrower question and stops short in a way that hands the argument downward.

1 · Legitimacy Asks: should CPL count as credit? Stops: treats legitimacy as a deficit to remedy 2 · Procedural Asks: can a student actually get it? Stops: finds blocked paths, not who unblocks them 3 · Coordination Asks: who aligns system, faculty, administration? Stops: the two axes are never joined 4 · Material conditions Asks: can the institution fund it and see it? Stops: treats money and data as merely technical The gap No account of the internal governance mechanism turning permission into practice This study Single-institution case · USG