| Eric Grodsky
University of Wisconsin
Thirty years of maximally maintained inequality in postsecondary education
FINAL REPORT: Constrained opportunity and student choice in American higher education
The importance of higher educaiton to the life chances of high school graduates increased substantially over the last quarter of the twentieth century. in this dissertation, I examine the contours of stratification among students who graduated high school in 1972, 1982 and 1992 and among the postsecondary institution these students attended. In particular, I evaluate the extent to which social class origins, race/ethnicity and student preferences have shaped the patterns of student-institution matches we observe over this period.
Previous work in sociology has tended to underestimate the role individual student choice plays in the stratification process, while work in economics has tended to underestimate the role played by institutional constraints on student opportunities. Researchers in both disciplines have often ingnored the stated preferences of students for institutional characteristics and of postsecondary institutions for student characteristics. Using the two-sided logit model, I try to remedy some of the shortcomings of past research by simultaneously modeling the preferences of both institutions and students that contribute to the observed student-institution matches. Where data are available, I complement these analyses with models of the stated preference of students and postsecondary institutions.
Results show modest and persistent advantages for children of parents with more education, high occupational standing and greater family income. These advantages pertain mostly to the odds of attending a four-year college or university above the bottom decile of colleges based on the average SAT scores of incoming students. There are few substantively meaningful differences in access to highly prestigious institutions and other institutions above the bottom decile by social class background, with the possible exception of family income. There are, however, substantial and persistent effects of race/ethnicity on the odds of admission to more prestigious institutions. I find evidence of increasing affirmative action effects for institutions above the median of the SAT score distribution after adjusting for social class, sex, and secondary school achievement. I also find that students in 1982 and 1992 increasingly preferred to attend schools at which their SAT scores were at or 100 points above the mean of SAT scores for all incoming students.
Back to Funded Dissertation Grants Page |