In 2015, McMillan Cottom was appointed assistant professor of sociology at
Virginia Commonwealth University and a faculty associate at the
Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. She was awarded tenure and promoted to the rank of associate professor in 2019. In 2020, she left Virginia Commonwealth University to join the faculty of the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She writes from the analytical perspective of
intersectionality. Her essays have advocated for reparations to African Americans, argued that racism rather than political correctness is the real threat to university campus life, and suggested that black girls are treated as more adult than white girls. In addition to her own writing, McMillan Cottom has been featured in
The New York Times,
Harvard Educational Review,
Inside Higher Ed, Drawing on her experience dealing with controversy as a public intellectual, McMillan Cottom wrote a guide for academics who come under public attack from organized digital campaigns. In 2019, McMillan Cottom and
Roxane Gay launched a podcast called
Hear to Slay to "amplify the voices and work of black women". McMillan Cottom received the Public Understanding of Sociology Award from the
American Sociological Association in 2020.
Lower Ed McMillan Cottom's 2017 book
Lower Ed analyzes the for-profit educational sector from the perspective of students trying to navigate a "risky and highly variable" economy.
Lower Ed is based on interviews with students and college executives, analysis of for-profit college promotional materials, and McMillan Cottom's own experience working as an enrollment officer at two for-profit institutions. The main finding is that rising emphasis on
credentialism in the American job market pushes students to make riskier but individually rational trade-offs to obtain educational credentials. According to McMillan Cottom, for-profit institutions are generally more expensive than non-profit institutions and aggressively market to low-income and working poor students who qualify for the most financial aid, but students are making considered choices about their futures and are not simply being duped by marketing.
Lower Ed suggests that policies intended to constrain the marketing behavior of for-profit institutions will not address the underlying
political economy issue, and may increase inequalities, especially gender inequalities, in the distribution of valued educational credentials and jobs.
Harvard Educational Review described
Lower Ed as "theoretically provocative, empirically rich, and enjoyable to read".
Thick McMillan Cottom's book
Thick: And Other Essays was published by
The New Press in 2019.
John Warner, writing for the
Chicago Tribune, described
Thick as "the story of Cottom's life" but also "a kind of manifesto". The book draws on examples from McMillan Cottom's life in the form of personal essays. These essays touch on topics including sexual abuse, divorce, and the death of a child to discuss broader issues in race, beauty, and education, such as why black women can never be seen as beautiful, why universities prefer African students to African American students, and how assumptions about wealth, competence, and pain undermine black women's efforts to achieve health and financial security.
Publishers Weekly gave
Thick a starred review, concluding that "the collection showcases Cottom's wisdom and originality".
The New York Times praised "the author's skillful interweaving of the academic with the popular" and concluded that
Thick "is sure to become a classic of black intellectualism".
Thick was a finalist for the 2019
National Book Award for Nonfiction. == Awards ==