While interdisciplinarity has been promoted in universities for decades, research suggests that untenured faculty struggle to receive recognition for their interdisciplinary research. Informed by the microfoundations of institutional theory and discursive legitimation, we examine how members of academic departments participate in the legitimation…

In this article we examine the ways in which institutional stratification and academic labor segmentation contribute to shaping faculty collaborative activities. We draw on interviews from science and engineering faculty at two institutions in the United States to highlight how collaboration, as an essential form of academic labor, is shaped by…

Researchers have investigated the demography and styles of engagement of those who enroll in MOOCs but have lent little attention to how learners navigate MOOCs' ambiguity as academic certifications. Analyzing semi-structured interviews with 60 people who devoted substantial time to at least one MOOC between 2014-2017, we find that people use…

Despite occupying a central position in contemporary U.S. higher education discourse, empirical research on administrative costs is limited. The purpose of this study was to extend existing research on administrative spending in higher education by empirically examining whether recently shifting to research university status in the Carnegie…

Globalizing forces have both transformed the higher education sector and made it increasingly homogenous. Growing similarities among universities have been attributed to isomorphic pressures to ensure and/or enhance legitimacy by imitating higher education institutions that are perceived as successful internationally, particularly universities…

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of 1979, this article examines the relationship between adolescents' educational and occupational expectations, and how they correspond to their subsequent labor market outcomes in adulthood. We show that over-aligned adolescents, those who expect to obtain more education than is necessary…

Elite higher education institutions work hard to secure diverse classes, and students seek out these institutions in part because they believe that diversity will enhance their own educational experiences. Institutional theories would predict that practices set by the elite institutions in the field would isomorphically trickle down, however, case…

Achievement in the professions is situated relationally. Work comes to constitute contribution only by the judgments of colleagues. This is paradigmatically the case in science and scholarship, where colleagues not only sanction others but also create their legacy. Normatively, it would stand to reason that colleagues would be held in high regard;…

Given the substantial lack of racial diversity within the U.S. legal profession, it is important to understand how to improve the representation of racially minoritized students at law schools. This study uses panel data from the 2010s to consider several types of factors that may shape the number and percentage of incoming law school students…

Recent trends in higher education (rising debt, school closures, increasing tuition) have increased interest in improving accountability and oversight in U.S. higher education beyond current accreditation practices. Common solutions include using quantitative measures like graduation and default rates to benchmark performance. Using historical…

Research often considers vertical stratification between U.S. higher education institutions. Yet differences also exist within higher education institutions, which we term "organizational segmentation." We understand organizational segmentation as a consequence of the external "prestige economy," which favors research revenues…

Many public research universities fail to enroll a critical mass of low-income and underrepresented minority (URM) students. Though founded with a commitment to access, public research universities face pressure to increase tuition revenue and to recruit high-achieving students. These pressures create an incentive to recruit nonresident students,…

Employing NCES databases, we investigate how college selectivity influences job satisfaction and prestige from the 1970s to the 1990s and across different racial categories. We find that the effect of college selectivity has essentially disappeared over time and that minority students are particularly disadvantaged with respect to job satisfaction.

This article addresses global postsecondary ranking systems by using critical-theoretical perspectives on power. This research suggests rankings are at once a useful lens for studying power in higher education and an important instrument for the exercise of power in service of dominant norms in global higher education. (Contains 1 table and 1…

During the past 50 years, the field of higher education has experienced growth, maturation, and specialization, coinciding with an almost exponential increase in the number of higher education journals. The proliferation of journals has led to an increased focus on journal status by members of the field. Not surprisingly, an informal journal caste…