David Karen

Changes in Access to Higher Education in the United States: 1980-1992.

This article explores the factors that determine how high school graduates become linked to colleges at particular levels of selectivity. First, it assesses various theories of change in educational attainment by comparing patterns of access to institutions of higher education of varying selectivity in the United States between 1980 and 1992. Second, with regard to how students and colleges of varying selectivity are matched, it replicates the work of James C. Hearn on 1980 high school graduates (using High School and Beyond) and introduces some additional variables, drawn primarily from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, in an analysis of 1992 high school graduates (using the National Education Longitudinal Study)

The Politics of Class, Race, and Gender: Access to Higher Education in the United States, 1960-1986.

This article, synthesizing the available (published and unpublished) evidence, describes patterns of inclusion of African-Americans, women, and working-class youth into the system of higher education from 1960 to 1986. Focusing not only on whether access has increased, but on whether these subordinate groups have gained access to elite institutions, this article examines the three groups in and across two periods (1960-76; 1976-86) to highlight differential patterns of access and to suggest a plausible explanation involving political mobilization to account for the observed trends. Although the general expansion of the system of higher education since 1960 has led to reduced differentials in access between dominant and subordinate groups, women and blacks--who mobilized--were able to gain access even to elite institutions. Workingclass youth did not experience such gains. A key factor that mediates these benefits of political mobilization is the recognition of the group as an official category in the societys system of classification. Using a variety of data sources, this article shows that, during times of both mobilization and countermobilization, access to particular levels of the higher education hierarchy generally follows the hypothesized directions. Further research that focuses on the precise mechanisms by which political mobilization produces the observed results is called for.

The dynamics of Young Men's career aspirations

Career aspirations have assumed a central place in our understanding of the process of social mobility, yet aspirations themselves have been subject to remarkably little scrutiny. We conduct an empirical analysis of the dynamics of aspirations in a cohort using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men. Our results indicate that (1) occupational aspirations decline with age; (2) the overwhelming majority of young men have high aspirations at some point; (3) occupational aspirations, highly unstable among teenagers, become more stable with age; and (4) differences by race and social origin grow with age, reflecting growing race and social class differences in educational attainment.

Toward a Political-Organizational Model of Gatekeeping: The Case of Elite Colleges

This article develops a theory of gatekeeping in the context of a case study of admission to an elite college-Harvard College. By focusing on the political and organizational context within which gatekeeping takes place, it shows how meritocratic and class-based factors each play roles in the decision-making process. The article demonstrates how attention to the organization and its field yields critical information about the microprocesses that govern the selection of individuals and the outcomes that contribute to our stratification order. It is suggested that the model of gatekeeping that is developed will be applicable to selection processes in other organizations.

Early factors leading to college graduation for Asians and non-Asians in the United States

This article explores factors that lead Asian Americans, both as a group and as subgroups, to obtain a college degree in comparison to members of other racial/ethnic groups in the United States. Using data from the 2000 wave of the National Education Longitudinal Study, we find that the effects of race on educational attainment virtually disappear once individual and family factors are controlled. However, there is significant heterogeneity in college attainment among Asian Americans. In addition, we find that the effects of socioeconomic status, parental expectations, eighth-grade grade point average, and family structure are generally weaker for Asian Americans relative to non-Asians while parental immigrant status and standardized test scores are stronger. Asians appear to be “protected” from many of the usual factors that negatively affect educational outcomes while receiving an enhanced benefit from being of an immigrant family.

“Achievement” and “ascription” in admission to an elite college: A political-organizational analysis

Researchers have typically understood access to elite positions in the social structure either in terms of a structural-functional focus on ability or a class-reproduction focus on inheritance. This paper argues, and empirically demonstrates with a study of access to Harvard College, that a political-organizational perspective incorporates and goes beyond the insights of each of these perspectives. Using concepts such as cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1977a) and organizational field (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983), hypotheses regarding who gets into Harvard College are generated and tested. Political mobilization as well as historic ties among elites are both key factors in determining admissions outcomes. Though academic merit is a prime determinant of admission to Harvard College, there was evidence that affirmative action for legacy applicants, minorities (but not Asians), athletes, and working-class males was also in effect.

Reproduction and opportunity: A study of dual career, aspirations and elite sports in Danish SportsClasses

In this article we analyze the patterns of retention in SportsClasses of promising young athletes in Denmark. Since 2005, SportsClasses have provided extra training for potential elite athletes in Grades 7–9 in designated Danish public schools. They were introduced after the Danish Ministry of Culture lowered the age of recruitment for athletes from 15 to 12 in response to increased competition in the world of elite sports. The SportsClasses attempt to balance collaboration between two different organizations: Danish public schools; and sports clubs. Using a survey of the student population in 2013 and a follow-up sample in 2015, we explored the respondents’ social backgrounds and experiences in order to understand their likelihood of retention during the program and their career aspirations. Focusing on socioeconomic status (SES), the role of having parents in elite sports, gender, and type of sport, we studied what key experiences and relationships lead students to abandon or sustain their interest in careers related to sports and how this differed for boys and girls. By applying Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and types of capital, we concluded that the program produced elements of both reproduction and opportunity but that the patterns strongly favored the retention of boys compared to girls. Our findings also suggest that the overlap between school and sport may have lead students from higher SES background to focus on education rather than sports.

The legitimacy of elite gatekeeping

ABSTRACT Natasha Warikoo’s study of how students at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities view race and fairness highlights the vast differences between the U.S. and Britain with respect to perceptions of meritocracy by these winners in the competition for places in elite institutions. The strict enforcement of uniform standards for admission is seen as critical and legitimate at Oxford, whereas a more holistic approach in the U.S. – one that sees racial diversity as an important and desirable part of the institution’s culture and identity – is seen as critical to a “diversity bargain”. I question the sources of students’ ideas about race and the diversity bargain, suggesting that they may be rooted more in their pre-college experiences than in their life at university. I also raise questions about whether and how an admissions lottery would work to address some of Warikoo’s concerns.

Review of Indian Spectacle: College Mascots and the Anxiety of Modern America, by Jennifer Guiliano.

micro. In tournament play single chess games may be lengthened or shortened with rules that place limits on the duration of gameplay, enforced by the tyranny of double clocks that measure each player’s deliberation time between moves. With fixed temporal limits on games—for instance, ‘‘game/60’’ matches allow sixty minutes of clock-time per person, while bullet chess may give players just one or two minutes each—the decisions that tournament organizers make concerning playtime impact how many total games can be scheduled and how many people of varying competencies can be accommodated over so many days. Presumably, a four-day roundrobin tournament requires more endurance and commitment from players than an afternoon match, just as bullet chess requires a level of skill that most novices lack. At the micro level, players experience chess matches viscerally according to the time pressures they exert, and therefore the quick tempos of sped-up games may prove more exhilarating (or anxiety-producing) than a more thoughtfully plotted two-hour contest. Of course, the most recent social realignment of chess owes much to the rise of digital technology and its cultural consequences. With the introduction of computer chess and then Internet chess, more games are played today than ever before, although perhaps not face to face, or in real space and time (or ‘‘over-the-board,’’ in the words of one of Fine’s informants). Yet some friendships made through online play and extended via social media carry over into the more embodied world of tournament action, thus enlivening the sociability of otherwise introverted loners with challenged social skills. Perhaps even more consequential has been the proliferation of online databases that archive millions of games, past and present. Increased instant access to this networked library can only further democratize the game, although for some members of the community it has transformed chess into a laborious pursuit that prioritizes memorizing and recalling the routine opening moves and defensive tactics of specific opponents, just as successful intercollegiate and professional football players must today prepare for matchups by watching endless video reels of their opponents. (Technological change has also led to accusations of cheating as competitors occasionally mobilize the assistance of advanced computer chess programs during gameplay.) Ultimately, the immediate recording and uploading of games played by top chess champions forces them to devise endlessly innovative variations of well-honed moves, thus improving game quality for contenders and fans alike. And so it is with Players and Pawns—another terrific piece of ethnography by a King of his craft, one who continues to reveal to his readers the sociological underbelly of everyday life and leisure in fresh and surprising ways.

Indian Spectacle: College Mascots and the Anxiety of Modern America

micro. In tournament play single chess games may be lengthened or shortened with rules that place limits on the duration of gameplay, enforced by the tyranny of double clocks that measure each player’s deliberation time between moves. With fixed temporal limits on games—for instance, ‘‘game/60’’ matches allow sixty minutes of clock-time per person, while bullet chess may give players just one or two minutes each—the decisions that tournament organizers make concerning playtime impact how many total games can be scheduled and how many people of varying competencies can be accommodated over so many days. Presumably, a four-day roundrobin tournament requires more endurance and commitment from players than an afternoon match, just as bullet chess requires a level of skill that most novices lack. At the micro level, players experience chess matches viscerally according to the time pressures they exert, and therefore the quick tempos of sped-up games may prove more exhilarating (or anxiety-producing) than a more thoughtfully plotted two-hour contest. Of course, the most recent social realignment of chess owes much to the rise of digital technology and its cultural consequences. With the introduction of computer chess and then Internet chess, more games are played today than ever before, although perhaps not face to face, or in real space and time (or ‘‘over-the-board,’’ in the words of one of Fine’s informants). Yet some friendships made through online play and extended via social media carry over into the more embodied world of tournament action, thus enlivening the sociability of otherwise introverted loners with challenged social skills. Perhaps even more consequential has been the proliferation of online databases that archive millions of games, past and present. Increased instant access to this networked library can only further democratize the game, although for some members of the community it has transformed chess into a laborious pursuit that prioritizes memorizing and recalling the routine opening moves and defensive tactics of specific opponents, just as successful intercollegiate and professional football players must today prepare for matchups by watching endless video reels of their opponents. (Technological change has also led to accusations of cheating as competitors occasionally mobilize the assistance of advanced computer chess programs during gameplay.) Ultimately, the immediate recording and uploading of games played by top chess champions forces them to devise endlessly innovative variations of well-honed moves, thus improving game quality for contenders and fans alike. And so it is with Players and Pawns—another terrific piece of ethnography by a King of his craft, one who continues to reveal to his readers the sociological underbelly of everyday life and leisure in fresh and surprising ways.