This article is concerned with college-aged activists' discussions about provocative speakers inv... more This article is concerned with college-aged activists' discussions about provocative speakers invited to their campuses. Our research shows how the students on the front lines of debates over free expression and inclusion conceptualize the stakes and think about the consequences of their political involvement. Our analysis goes beyond simplistic portrayals of young people as being either "for" or "against" speech rights. Instead, we argue that conservative activists adopt an absolutist stance toward the First Amendment, which is encouraged by outside national organizations that regard free expression as a wedge issue in higher education. This contrasts with progressive activists, who struggle to weigh the value of individual freedoms against the potential harms caused by derogatory or hostile words and symbols. Ultimately, our semi-structured interview data allow us to see the complex (and sometimes contradictory) reasoning behind students' responses to contentious speaking events at colleges and universities
Using concepts associated with effectively maintained inequality theory and horizontal stratifica... more Using concepts associated with effectively maintained inequality theory and horizontal stratification, the authors ask whether the private-public dividing line is a “threshold of consequence” for early-career market entry. To address this empirically, the authors use a novel LinkedIn data set to analyze job pathways for the graduating class of 2016 from the top 25 private and top 25 public universities in the United States. In line with past qualitative research, the authors find evidence that elite private graduates enter high-status industries in greater proportion than their public university counterparts. They also tend to get jobs at more prestigious and higher paying firms and to attain more prestigious job titles. On the basis of the evidence, the authors call for more closely analyzing the layers of advantage that may accumulate to elite graduates during key transitional moments, such as during the postgraduation job search. The authors also shed additional light on how the ...
The last two decades have seen historians and political scientists extensively study the rise of ... more The last two decades have seen historians and political scientists extensively study the rise of conservatism. An addition to that literature, this book offers an analysis of the state of college conservatism and explains the factors that shape the student and the citizen. Conservative pundits allege that the pervasive liberalism of America's colleges and universities has detrimental effects on undergraduates, most particularly right-leaning ones. Yet not enough attention has actually been paid to young conservatives to test these claims—until now. This book explores who conservative students are, and how their beliefs and political activism relate to their university experiences. It shows that the diverse conservative movement evolving among today's college students holds important implications for the direction of American politics.
Critics on the political right have long derided the liberal academy and its negative consequence... more Critics on the political right have long derided the liberal academy and its negative consequences for all college students claiming that the most deleterious effects fall on undergraduates who identify as conservative. In spite of this extensive critique sociologists know relatively little ...
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2008
By 2008, the much publicized cultural turn in sociology is old news.1 How far are we from the p... more By 2008, the much publicized cultural turn in sociology is old news.1 How far are we from the point where we made our initial turn toward culture? Some say we are in the midst of it (Friedland and Mohr 2004), while others believe we are in fact moving beyond it (Bonnell and Hunt ...
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2008
By 2008, the much publicized cultural turn in sociology is old news.1 How far are we from the p... more By 2008, the much publicized cultural turn in sociology is old news.1 How far are we from the point where we made our initial turn toward culture? Some say we are in the midst of it (Friedland and Mohr 2004), while others believe we are in fact moving beyond it (Bonnell and Hunt ...
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2008
I review the primary frameworks through which North American sociologists have conceived of the r... more I review the primary frameworks through which North American sociologists have conceived of the relation between formal education and culture, and explain how sociologists' preponderant conception of formal schooling as an individual-level phenomenon and a metrical quantity has come to constrain intellectual progress in much of the subfield. I offer two analytic strategies which might help loosen this constraint.
This study documents a new case of the further commercialization of the university, the rapid ado... more This study documents a new case of the further commercialization of the university, the rapid adoption of corporate partnership programs (CPPs) within centralized university career services departments. CPPs function as a type of headhunting agency. For an annual fee they facilitate a corporate hiring department's direct access to student talent, allowing the company to outsource much of its hiring tasks to the university career center. CPPs are a feature found predominantly, though not exclusively, on campuses where there is a highly rationalized logic around the economic benefits of academic science. Further, CPPs represent a commercialization of practice that is in tension with the student-development mission of traditional career counselors. Using an inhabited institutionalist approach, we show how the models differ and how staff on each side attempt to negotiate their competing roles in the multiversity environment. We also discuss some of the potential impact on students, on the career services profession, and on college-to-work pathways.
Elite universities are credited as launch points for the widest variety of meaningful careers. Ye... more Elite universities are credited as launch points for the widest variety of meaningful careers. Yet, year after year at the most selective universities, nearly half the graduating seniors head to a surprisingly narrow band of professional options. Over the past few decades, this has largely been into the finance and consulting sectors, but increasingly it also includes high-tech firms. This study uses a cultural-organizational lens to show how student cultures and campus structures steer large portions of anxious and uncertain students into high-wealth, high-status occupational sectors. Interviewing 56 students and recent alumni at Harvard and Stanford Universities, we found that the majority of our respondents experienced confusion about career paths when first arriving at college but quickly learned what were considered to be the most prestigious options. On-campus corporate recruitment for finance, consulting, and high-tech jobs functioned as a significant driver of student perceptions of status; career prestige systems built up among peers exacerbated the funneling effect into these jobs. From these processes, students learned to draw boundaries between ‘‘high-status’’ and ‘‘ordinary’’ jobs. Our findings demonstrate how status processes on college campuses are central in generating preferences for the uppermost positions in the occupational structure and that elite campus environments have a large, independent role in the production and reproduction of social inequality.
This article is concerned with college-aged activists' discussions about provocative speakers inv... more This article is concerned with college-aged activists' discussions about provocative speakers invited to their campuses. Our research shows how the students on the front lines of debates over free expression and inclusion conceptualize the stakes and think about the consequences of their political involvement. Our analysis goes beyond simplistic portrayals of young people as being either "for" or "against" speech rights. Instead, we argue that conservative activists adopt an absolutist stance toward the First Amendment, which is encouraged by outside national organizations that regard free expression as a wedge issue in higher education. This contrasts with progressive activists, who struggle to weigh the value of individual freedoms against the potential harms caused by derogatory or hostile words and symbols. Ultimately, our semi-structured interview data allow us to see the complex (and sometimes contradictory) reasoning behind students' responses to contentious speaking events at colleges and universities
Using concepts associated with effectively maintained inequality theory and horizontal stratifica... more Using concepts associated with effectively maintained inequality theory and horizontal stratification, the authors ask whether the private-public dividing line is a “threshold of consequence” for early-career market entry. To address this empirically, the authors use a novel LinkedIn data set to analyze job pathways for the graduating class of 2016 from the top 25 private and top 25 public universities in the United States. In line with past qualitative research, the authors find evidence that elite private graduates enter high-status industries in greater proportion than their public university counterparts. They also tend to get jobs at more prestigious and higher paying firms and to attain more prestigious job titles. On the basis of the evidence, the authors call for more closely analyzing the layers of advantage that may accumulate to elite graduates during key transitional moments, such as during the postgraduation job search. The authors also shed additional light on how the ...
The last two decades have seen historians and political scientists extensively study the rise of ... more The last two decades have seen historians and political scientists extensively study the rise of conservatism. An addition to that literature, this book offers an analysis of the state of college conservatism and explains the factors that shape the student and the citizen. Conservative pundits allege that the pervasive liberalism of America's colleges and universities has detrimental effects on undergraduates, most particularly right-leaning ones. Yet not enough attention has actually been paid to young conservatives to test these claims—until now. This book explores who conservative students are, and how their beliefs and political activism relate to their university experiences. It shows that the diverse conservative movement evolving among today's college students holds important implications for the direction of American politics.
Critics on the political right have long derided the liberal academy and its negative consequence... more Critics on the political right have long derided the liberal academy and its negative consequences for all college students claiming that the most deleterious effects fall on undergraduates who identify as conservative. In spite of this extensive critique sociologists know relatively little ...
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2008
By 2008, the much publicized cultural turn in sociology is old news.1 How far are we from the p... more By 2008, the much publicized cultural turn in sociology is old news.1 How far are we from the point where we made our initial turn toward culture? Some say we are in the midst of it (Friedland and Mohr 2004), while others believe we are in fact moving beyond it (Bonnell and Hunt ...
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2008
By 2008, the much publicized cultural turn in sociology is old news.1 How far are we from the p... more By 2008, the much publicized cultural turn in sociology is old news.1 How far are we from the point where we made our initial turn toward culture? Some say we are in the midst of it (Friedland and Mohr 2004), while others believe we are in fact moving beyond it (Bonnell and Hunt ...
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2008
I review the primary frameworks through which North American sociologists have conceived of the r... more I review the primary frameworks through which North American sociologists have conceived of the relation between formal education and culture, and explain how sociologists' preponderant conception of formal schooling as an individual-level phenomenon and a metrical quantity has come to constrain intellectual progress in much of the subfield. I offer two analytic strategies which might help loosen this constraint.
This study documents a new case of the further commercialization of the university, the rapid ado... more This study documents a new case of the further commercialization of the university, the rapid adoption of corporate partnership programs (CPPs) within centralized university career services departments. CPPs function as a type of headhunting agency. For an annual fee they facilitate a corporate hiring department's direct access to student talent, allowing the company to outsource much of its hiring tasks to the university career center. CPPs are a feature found predominantly, though not exclusively, on campuses where there is a highly rationalized logic around the economic benefits of academic science. Further, CPPs represent a commercialization of practice that is in tension with the student-development mission of traditional career counselors. Using an inhabited institutionalist approach, we show how the models differ and how staff on each side attempt to negotiate their competing roles in the multiversity environment. We also discuss some of the potential impact on students, on the career services profession, and on college-to-work pathways.
Elite universities are credited as launch points for the widest variety of meaningful careers. Ye... more Elite universities are credited as launch points for the widest variety of meaningful careers. Yet, year after year at the most selective universities, nearly half the graduating seniors head to a surprisingly narrow band of professional options. Over the past few decades, this has largely been into the finance and consulting sectors, but increasingly it also includes high-tech firms. This study uses a cultural-organizational lens to show how student cultures and campus structures steer large portions of anxious and uncertain students into high-wealth, high-status occupational sectors. Interviewing 56 students and recent alumni at Harvard and Stanford Universities, we found that the majority of our respondents experienced confusion about career paths when first arriving at college but quickly learned what were considered to be the most prestigious options. On-campus corporate recruitment for finance, consulting, and high-tech jobs functioned as a significant driver of student perceptions of status; career prestige systems built up among peers exacerbated the funneling effect into these jobs. From these processes, students learned to draw boundaries between ‘‘high-status’’ and ‘‘ordinary’’ jobs. Our findings demonstrate how status processes on college campuses are central in generating preferences for the uppermost positions in the occupational structure and that elite campus environments have a large, independent role in the production and reproduction of social inequality.
Integrating an analysis of fields into studies of social change provides a better understanding o... more Integrating an analysis of fields into studies of social change provides a better understanding of the outcomes achieved by challengers. We demonstrate the value of field analysis through a case study of a social change effort regarding urban land use. An organization led by wealthy and well-connected individuals pressed city government and a powerful for-profit developer to incorporate progressive social goals into a new urban development project. We show how the organization was able to achieve success in the policy formation field but faced significantly more obstacles when trying to enter another field (policy implementation), despite its elite status. Thus, using fields to study the case can bolster scholars' understanding of elite power and status, as well as help explain outcomes. The advantages enjoyed by elites can be field specific rather than universal, and so do not translate automatically into successful challenge results.
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Papers by Amy Binder
year at the most selective universities, nearly half the graduating seniors head to a surprisingly narrow band
of professional options. Over the past few decades, this has largely been into the finance and consulting
sectors, but increasingly it also includes high-tech firms. This study uses a cultural-organizational lens to
show how student cultures and campus structures steer large portions of anxious and uncertain students
into high-wealth, high-status occupational sectors. Interviewing 56 students and recent alumni at Harvard
and Stanford Universities, we found that the majority of our respondents experienced confusion about
career paths when first arriving at college but quickly learned what were considered to be the most prestigious
options. On-campus corporate recruitment for finance, consulting, and high-tech jobs functioned as
a significant driver of student perceptions of status; career prestige systems built up among peers exacerbated
the funneling effect into these jobs. From these processes, students learned to draw boundaries
between ‘‘high-status’’ and ‘‘ordinary’’ jobs. Our findings demonstrate how status processes on college
campuses are central in generating preferences for the uppermost positions in the occupational structure
and that elite campus environments have a large, independent role in the production and reproduction of
social inequality.
year at the most selective universities, nearly half the graduating seniors head to a surprisingly narrow band
of professional options. Over the past few decades, this has largely been into the finance and consulting
sectors, but increasingly it also includes high-tech firms. This study uses a cultural-organizational lens to
show how student cultures and campus structures steer large portions of anxious and uncertain students
into high-wealth, high-status occupational sectors. Interviewing 56 students and recent alumni at Harvard
and Stanford Universities, we found that the majority of our respondents experienced confusion about
career paths when first arriving at college but quickly learned what were considered to be the most prestigious
options. On-campus corporate recruitment for finance, consulting, and high-tech jobs functioned as
a significant driver of student perceptions of status; career prestige systems built up among peers exacerbated
the funneling effect into these jobs. From these processes, students learned to draw boundaries
between ‘‘high-status’’ and ‘‘ordinary’’ jobs. Our findings demonstrate how status processes on college
campuses are central in generating preferences for the uppermost positions in the occupational structure
and that elite campus environments have a large, independent role in the production and reproduction of
social inequality.