Graduate and professional education play an increasingly important role in economic
inequality and elite formation in the United States, but sociologists have not subjected …

The use of race in college admissions is one of the most contentious issues in US higher
education. We survey the literature on the impact of racial preferences in college admissions …

As the workforce has become more educated, educational decisions are about what type of
education to pursue as well as how much to pursue. In college, individuals somewhat …

This paper asks whether elite colleges help students outside of historically advantaged
groups reach top positions in the economy. I combine administrative data on income and …

Proposition 209 banned race-based affirmative action at California public universities in
1998. Using a difference-in-differences research design and a newly constructed …

Public policy in modern India features affirmative action programs intended to reduce
inequality that stems from a centuries-old caste structure and history of disparate treatment …

Actual and perceived gender norms are key to understanding gender inequality in society. In
this paper, using newly collected nationally representative datasets from 60 countries that …

Nonfinancial barriers to college are an important possible explanation for socioeconomic,
racial, gender, and other gaps in college access and success. A sizeable economic …

I analyze how two reforms, introduced to expand college access in Brazil, impacted
enrollments of low-SES students. The first policy centralized applications in a nationwide …

This paper empirically studies the distributional consequences of affirmative action in the
context of a centralized college admission system. We examine the effects of a large-scale …