How do students at elite universities think about the economic and educational returns of their college education? Drawing on 29 interviews from first-year students at an elite university, I find that students think that attending an elite university will allow them to secure a high degree of social status, which they believe is integral to…

As previous research has not addressed the relationship between university autonomy and university rankings within countries where the state control model is used, this study explores universities' strategies to achieve top university rankings in accordance with their autonomous rights and financial as well as political support. Specifically, this…

So-called cognitive enhancing drugs (CEDs) are relatively common in higher education, especially among students who are white, male, and attend highly selective institutions. Using qualitative data from a diverse sample of 32 students at an elite university, the present study aims to examine whether students perceive CED use to be advantageous,…

Trustees span the boundaries between universities and their environments, and therefore may connect universities to other organizations. We use social networks and latent profile analyses to chart changes in the affiliations that trustees of AAU member universities maintained with other organizations from 1975 through 2015. Results identify a…

The study of elites is enjoying a revival at a time of increasing economic inequality. Sociologists of education have been leaders in this area, researching how affluent families position their children to compete favorably in a highly stratified higher education system. However, scholars have done less research on how students do symbolic work of…

This article uses philosophical analysis to clarify the arguments and claims about racial discrimination brought forward in the recent legal challenges to affirmative action in higher education admissions. Affirmative action opponents have argued that elite institutions of higher education are using negative action against Asian American…

Most previous research on grammar schools has focused narrowly on eligibility for Free School Meals as a measure of disadvantage. But with 45% of pupils at grammar schools coming from families with below median incomes, a broader consideration of the impact of grammar schools on social mobility is necessary. The evidence suggests that grammar…

Purpose: What do principals look for when hiring teachers? The purpose of this paper is to extend the knowledge concerning what aspects of teacher quality are in demand among the individuals who administer schools and make hiring decisions. Design/methodology/approach: Rather than employing interviews or surveys, the authors utilized a conjoint…

The UK government is planning to increase the number of pupils attending state-funded selective grammar schools, claiming that this will assist overall standards, reduce the poverty attainment gap and so aid social mobility. Using the full 2015 cohort of pupils in England, this article shows how the pupils attending grammar schools are stratified…

More than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, recent studies, complaints filed with the U.S. Department of Education, and lawsuits filed against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reveal that many academic institutions are engaging in blatant racial discrimination by gaming the system,…

Selective admission is a process used by most health science educational programs to admit the most probable candidates to complete the program. Health science program accreditation, funding, and staffing is often dependent on programmatic outcomes such as program completion rates. Radiography programs use a selective admission process, but each…

As the most prominent initiative in the open education movement, the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is often claimed to disrupt established educational models through the use of innovative technologies that overcome geographic and economic barriers to higher education. However, this paper suggests that the MOOC project, as a typical example of…

We study the UK's university application system, in which students apply based on predicted examination grades, rather than actual results. Using three years of UK university applications data we find that only 16% of applicants' predicted grades are accurate, with 75% of applicants having over-predicted grades. However, high-attaining,…

Using an emerging model of family engagement in higher education and the concept of parental role construction as a framework, this study presents the "Ley de la Vida" (Law of Life) process to explore how Latina/o immigrant parents experience their children's transition to higher education. Centered on the experiences of 15 parents of…

The purpose of the paper is to review literature on the challenges and the way forward of the Computerized School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) in Ghana. Literature informs us that the key challenge to the Computerized School Selection and Placement System was the human factor in terms of refusal of parents and students to accept…