Steven Brint
Biographic Data
| ID | 3610091 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steven Brint |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steven |
| FAMILY NAME | Brint |
| SIGNATURE | BRINT S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Department of Sociology, University of California, Riverside, California, USA |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 54 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 348 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 55 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Profesiones y mercado
Las profesiones y los profesionales estan diferenciados en sus posiciones en el mercado y en sus posiciones de poder. Este articulo discutira las razones que hacen que algunas profesiones y algunos profesionales esten mejor situados en el mercado y mejor pagados que otros. Argumento que las fuentes principales de valor y poder en el mercado son la capacidad de las profesiones para organizarse en el ejercicio privado, la contribucion a los interes…
The Disruption in U.S. Public Higher Education Enrollments, 2009–2019
The trend toward continuous expansion of U.S. post-secondary enrollments was reversed in the 2010s. Using pooled state-level data in between-within models, we examine public higher education enrollment trends during the 2009–2019 period. We emphasize variation in the net associations of covariates by tiers. State economic conditions showed stronger net associations with regional comprehensive and community college enrollments than with research u…
In an Age of Experts
Interdisciplinary Cluster Hiring Initiatives in U.S. Research Universities
Over the last three decades, interdisciplinary cluster hiring programs have become popular on research university campuses as an approach to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. These programs have not yet been rigorously evaluated across multiple institutions and multiple thematic fields. The paper reports the results of a survey of 199 cluster hires across 20 research universities, supplemented by interviews with 18 administrators and clu…
Guide for the Perplexed
In this chapter the author focuses on the best known of Michael Burawoy's works on "public sociology", the version of his presidential address published in the American Sociological Review under the title "For Public Sociology". Burawoy hopes to turn the focus of more sociology in the direction of disciplinary self-criticism and concrete contributions to society. The doctoral degree is, at bottom, a research degree. In the humanities and social s…
The Educational Backgrounds of American Business and Government Leaders
The paper provides new empirical evidence on the educational backgrounds of US business and government leaders. Analyzing a sample of 3,990 senior executives drawn from 15 sectors, including government, we find significant industry variation. Industries whose products depend primarily on the manipulation of symbolic media were the most likely to recruit from elite colleges. By contrast, industries involved in the transformation of the material wo…
New Concepts, Expanding Audiences
New Concepts, Expanding Audiences:What Highly Cited Texts Tell Us about Scholarly Knowledge in the Social Sciences Steven Brint (bio) what does the future hold for scholarly knowledge in the social sciences? Some have argued that the social sciences will be marginalized in a future that focuses much more heavily even than our current era does on knowledge produced by the natural sciences and engineering. Others have argued that the future of the …
Surviving and Thriving
Press reports and industry statistics both give incomplete pictures of the outcomes of the Great Recession for U.S. four-year colleges and universities. To address these gaps, we conducted a statistical analysis of all articles that appeared in Lexis-Nexis on a sample of more than 300 U.S. colleges and universities during the Recession years. We identify four clusters of institutional responses, which we label “consumer service,” “market search,”…
The Schooled Society
The Light Bulb Test
My vision of the sociology of education comes out of identification with the aspirations of the nineteenth-century founders of sociology, many of whom, in Comte’s ([1851–1854] 1896) words, saw the new discipline as the ‘‘queen of the sciences.’’ For this founding generation, sociology could aspire to be the most important of the social sciences because it took the widest view, focusing not on a single set of social institutions but on all social …
Declining Academic Fields in U.S. Four-Year Colleges and Universities, 1970—2006
View correction statement:Erratum Additional informationNotes on contributorsSteven BrintSteven Brint is Vice Provost, Undergraduate Education and Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside.Kristopher ProctorKristopher Proctor is a post-doctoral scholar at Stanford University.Kerry MulliganKerry Mulligan and Matthew B. Rotondi are graduate students at the University of California, Riverside.Matthew B. RotondiKerry Mulligan …
Who's Right About the Right? Comparing Competing Explanations of the Link Between White Evangelicals and Conservative Politics in the United States
Five competing explanations for why white evangelicals hold right-of-center political attitudes are examined using data from the 2000–2004 National Election Studies. Dependent variables include attitudes about abortion, homosexuality, immigration, national defense, and social spending. The five competing explanations accounting for conservative positions are: religiosity, moral standards traditionalism, gender and family ideology, class culture, …
General Education Models
General education requirements comprise, on average, approximately 30% of the undergraduate curriculum and therefore represent an important feature of the student academic experience in American colleges and universities. Previous studies have not fully examined the origins of the most important models of general education, the distribution of these models among higher education institutions, or the causes for change in general education requirem…
Colleges and Universities
The distant predecessors of colleges and universities go back in the West to the Greek academies of the fourth and fifth centuries bce . In these academies, young men from the governing classes studied rhetoric and philosophy (and $@#*^%#@#ldquo;lesser$@#*^%#@#rdquor; subjects) as training for public life (Marrou 1982). In the East, the roots of higher education go back to the training of future government bureaucrats at the feet of masters of Co…
Powers of the Mind
Reference Sets, Identities, and Aspirations in a Complex Organizational Field
This article introduces cluster analysis and reference set analysis as tools for understanding structure, identity, and aspiration in complex organizational fields. Cluster analysis is used to identify the structure of the organizational field in American four-year colleges and universities. The article shows that presidential choices of reference institutions closely parallel the major locations in this structure. By contrast, several widely use…
Guide for the perplexed
From the Liberal to the Practical Arts in American Colleges and Universities
Additional informationNotes on contributorsSteven BrintSteven Brint is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside. Mark Riddle, Lori Turk-Bicakci, and Charles S. Levy are graduate students in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside.Mark RiddleSteven Brint is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside. Mark Riddle, Lori Turk-Bicakci…
The Future of the City of Intellect
Based on new data and new analytical frameworks, this book assesses forces of change at play in development of American universities and their prospects for future. The book begins with a lengthy introduction by Clark Kerr that not only provides an overview of change since time he coined phrase the city of intellect but also discusses major changes that will affect American universities over next thirty years. Part One examines demographic and ec…
Few Remaining Dreams
In recent years, three schools of thought—human capital economics, sociological contradictions theory, and the new structuralism—have contributed to discussions of the role of community colleges in American postsecondary education. An evaluation of this work suggests that the circumstances of community colleges have, in several respects, changed for the worse in the years since publication of the author’s book, The Diverted Dream (with Jerome Kar…
Data on Higher Education in the United States
Higher education is a mixed sector. It includes many public institutions as well as many independent colleges and universities. It also includes some for-profit enterprises. Data resources for the study of higher education are generally very good. This is particularly true for studies of students, faculty, institutional quality, and financial resources. This article provides a catalog of existing data resources, including comments about limitatio…
Will and Wile
Discussions of the research process, even when they focus on histories of research projects rather than on formal methods, do not sufficiently emphasize the personal qualities, skills, and associations that make for excellence in research. In this essay, which is intended for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students, I use examples of well-known researchers to discuss the qualities of passionate commitment, persistence, ingenuity, …
Socialization Messages in Primary Schools
Using the tools of organizational analysis, this article presents a framework for understanding the volume and content of socialization messages expressed in 64 primary school classrooms. This framework specifies five levels of classroom and school organization in which socialization messages are embedded. It links the behavioral ideals expressed at two of these levels—teacher-initiated interactions in the classroom and schoolwide programs—to the…
Professionals and the 'Knowledge Economy
This article argues that four distinct streams of thought flow into current conceptions of the knowledge economy. Drawing on these four streams of thought and on labor force data from the USA, the article develops a synthetic view of the knowledge economy. The analysis suggests that the knowledge economy, while of growing importance, remains smaller in the aggregate than other parts of the economy. The article also defines five sectors of the kno…
Gemeinschaft Revisited
Community remains a potent symbol and aspiration in political and intellectual life. However, it has largely passed out of sociological analysis. The paper shows why this has occurred, and it develops a new typology that can make the concept useful again in sociology. The new typology is based on identifying structurally distinct subtypes of community using a small number of partitioning variables. The first partition is defined by the ultimate c…
Gemeinschaft Revisited
Community remains a potent symbol and aspiration in political and intellectual life. However, it has largely passed out of sociological analysis. The paper shows why this has occurred, and it develops a new typology that can make the concept useful again in sociology. The new typology is based on identifying structurally distinct subtypes of community using a small number of partitioning variables. The first partition is defined by the ultimate c…
New-Class' and Cumulative Trend Explanations of the Liberal Political Attitudes of Professionals
Recent discussions of political divisions in American society have sometimes highlighted the rise of a "new class" of salaried professionals and technically trained managers. New-class theorists have depicted these "knowledge workers" as engaged in a contest for power and status with traditionally powerful business elites. However, the liberal attitudes of knowledge workers may also be interpreted as the result of a conjunction of several general…
From the Liberal to the Practical Arts in American Colleges and Universities
Additional informationNotes on contributorsSteven BrintSteven Brint is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside. Mark Riddle, Lori Turk-Bicakci, and Charles S. Levy are graduate students in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside.Mark RiddleSteven Brint is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside. Mark Riddle, Lori Turk-Bicakci…
The Political Attitudes of Professionals
In the 1960s and 1970s, political events and polling data indicated a significant rise in liberal and dissenting political attitudes among American professionals. These data seem to run counter to the historically typical connection between social privilege and conservative politics. The major purpose of this paper is to provide a descriptive portrait of the politics of professionals since 1960, through a review of American survey research. Busin…
Professionals and the 'Knowledge Economy
This article argues that four distinct streams of thought flow into current conceptions of the knowledge economy. Drawing on these four streams of thought and on labor force data from the USA, the article develops a synthetic view of the knowledge economy. The analysis suggests that the knowledge economy, while of growing importance, remains smaller in the aggregate than other parts of the economy. The article also defines five sectors of the kno…
The Diverted Dream
Rethinking the policy influence of experts
Who's Right About the Right? Comparing Competing Explanations of the Link Between White Evangelicals and Conservative Politics in the United States
Five competing explanations for why white evangelicals hold right-of-center political attitudes are examined using data from the 2000–2004 National Election Studies. Dependent variables include attitudes about abortion, homosexuality, immigration, national defense, and social spending. The five competing explanations accounting for conservative positions are: religiosity, moral standards traditionalism, gender and family ideology, class culture, …
Socialization Messages in Primary Schools
Using the tools of organizational analysis, this article presents a framework for understanding the volume and content of socialization messages expressed in 64 primary school classrooms. This framework specifies five levels of classroom and school organization in which socialization messages are embedded. It links the behavioral ideals expressed at two of these levels—teacher-initiated interactions in the classroom and schoolwide programs—to the…
Hidden Meanings
This paper is about structural sociology as practiced by one of the more important sociologists and social thinkers of our day-Harrison White, lately of Columbia University. I have chosen this topic because thinking is an important, perhaps the most important, feature of contemporary social thought; because Professor White's approach to the study of social structure is particularly influential; and because, frankly, I have misgivings about certai…
Reference Sets, Identities, and Aspirations in a Complex Organizational Field
This article introduces cluster analysis and reference set analysis as tools for understanding structure, identity, and aspiration in complex organizational fields. Cluster analysis is used to identify the structure of the organizational field in American four-year colleges and universities. The article shows that presidential choices of reference institutions closely parallel the major locations in this structure. By contrast, several widely use…
The Educational Backgrounds of American Business and Government Leaders
The paper provides new empirical evidence on the educational backgrounds of US business and government leaders. Analyzing a sample of 3,990 senior executives drawn from 15 sectors, including government, we find significant industry variation. Industries whose products depend primarily on the manipulation of symbolic media were the most likely to recruit from elite colleges. By contrast, industries involved in the transformation of the material wo…
Few Remaining Dreams
In recent years, three schools of thought—human capital economics, sociological contradictions theory, and the new structuralism—have contributed to discussions of the role of community colleges in American postsecondary education. An evaluation of this work suggests that the circumstances of community colleges have, in several respects, changed for the worse in the years since publication of the author’s book, The Diverted Dream (with Jerome Kar…
Eliot Freidson's Contribution to the Sociology of Professions
This article discusses three major contributions of Eliot Freidson to the sociology of professions: (a) Freidson's work introduces a new concept of the professions rooted in the social organization of labor markets. This concept is far more harmonious with the contemporary situation of professions than any previous effort to conceptualize the differences between professions and other occupations. (b) The work provides an analysis of the spheres o…
General Education Models
General education requirements comprise, on average, approximately 30% of the undergraduate curriculum and therefore represent an important feature of the student academic experience in American colleges and universities. Previous studies have not fully examined the origins of the most important models of general education, the distribution of these models among higher education institutions, or the causes for change in general education requirem…
Guide for the perplexed
Declining Academic Fields in U.S. Four-Year Colleges and Universities, 1970—2006
View correction statement:Erratum Additional informationNotes on contributorsSteven BrintSteven Brint is Vice Provost, Undergraduate Education and Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside.Kristopher ProctorKristopher Proctor is a post-doctoral scholar at Stanford University.Kerry MulliganKerry Mulligan and Matthew B. Rotondi are graduate students at the University of California, Riverside.Matthew B. RotondiKerry Mulligan …
Les community colleges américains et la politique de l'inégalité
Die «community colleges» und die Politik der Ungleichheit. Das amerikanische junior oder community college (zwei-jährige Ausbildung), dessen Gründung Anfang des Jahrhunderts den Einstieg in Langzeitstudiengänge im Hochschulbereich (vier Jahre) ermöglichen sollte, hat sich in den letzten zwanzig Jahren in eine Institution für berufliche Kurzausbildung verwandelt. Als Erkiärung für diesen Wandel schlagen die Autoren ein «Institutionsmodell» vor, da…
The Diverted Dream
Profesiones y mercado
Las profesiones y los profesionales estan diferenciados en sus posiciones en el mercado y en sus posiciones de poder. Este articulo discutira las razones que hacen que algunas profesiones y algunos profesionales esten mejor situados en el mercado y mejor pagados que otros. Argumento que las fuentes principales de valor y poder en el mercado son la capacidad de las profesiones para organizarse en el ejercicio privado, la contribucion a los interes…
Interdisciplinary Cluster Hiring Initiatives in U.S. Research Universities
Over the last three decades, interdisciplinary cluster hiring programs have become popular on research university campuses as an approach to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. These programs have not yet been rigorously evaluated across multiple institutions and multiple thematic fields. The paper reports the results of a survey of 199 cluster hires across 20 research universities, supplemented by interviews with 18 administrators and clu…
Data on Higher Education in the United States
Higher education is a mixed sector. It includes many public institutions as well as many independent colleges and universities. It also includes some for-profit enterprises. Data resources for the study of higher education are generally very good. This is particularly true for studies of students, faculty, institutional quality, and financial resources. This article provides a catalog of existing data resources, including comments about limitatio…
What If They Gave a War
The Disruption in U.S. Public Higher Education Enrollments, 2009–2019
The trend toward continuous expansion of U.S. post-secondary enrollments was reversed in the 2010s. Using pooled state-level data in between-within models, we examine public higher education enrollment trends during the 2009–2019 period. We emphasize variation in the net associations of covariates by tiers. State economic conditions showed stronger net associations with regional comprehensive and community college enrollments than with research u…
Will and Wile
Discussions of the research process, even when they focus on histories of research projects rather than on formal methods, do not sufficiently emphasize the personal qualities, skills, and associations that make for excellence in research. In this essay, which is intended for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students, I use examples of well-known researchers to discuss the qualities of passionate commitment, persistence, ingenuity, …
"New Class" or New Scapegoat
Professions in Government
The Dynamics of Organizational Change in Education
New-Class' and Cumulative Trend Explanations of the Liberal Political Attitudes of Professionals
Recent discussions of political divisions in American society have sometimes highlighted the rise of a "new class" of salaried professionals and technically trained managers. New-class theorists have depicted these "knowledge workers" as engaged in a contest for power and status with traditionally powerful business elites. However, the liberal attitudes of knowledge workers may also be interpreted as the result of a conjunction of several general…
No Room at the Top
The Political Attitudes of Professionals
In the 1960s and 1970s, political events and polling data indicated a significant rise in liberal and dissenting political attitudes among American professionals. These data seem to run counter to the historically typical connection between social privilege and conservative politics. The major purpose of this paper is to provide a descriptive portrait of the politics of professionals since 1960, through a review of American survey research. Busin…
Classifications Struggles
Beyond Monopoly
The Diverted Dream
In the twentieth century, Americans have increasingly looked to the schools--and, in particular, to the nation's colleges and universities--as guardians of the cherished national ideal of equality of opportunity. With the best jobs increasingly monopolized by those with higher education, the opportunity to attend college has become an integral part of the American dream of upward mobility. The two-year college--which now enrolls more than four mi…
Italy observed
Socialist Entrepreneurs
Rethinking the policy influence of experts
Patterns of American Culture
The Diverted Dream
Journal Article The Diverted Dream: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportunity in America, 1900–1985. By Steven Brint and Jerome Karabel. (New Irbrk: Oxford University Press, 1989. xii + 312 pp. $24.95.) Get access David O. Levine David O. Levine Touch American History Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 77, Issue 3, December 1990, Pages 1064–1065, https:/…
The Diverted Dream
The Diverted Dream
Les community colleges américains et la politique de l'inégalité
Die «community colleges» und die Politik der Ungleichheit. Das amerikanische junior oder community college (zwei-jährige Ausbildung), dessen Gründung Anfang des Jahrhunderts den Einstieg in Langzeitstudiengänge im Hochschulbereich (vier Jahre) ermöglichen sollte, hat sich in den letzten zwanzig Jahren in eine Institution für berufliche Kurzausbildung verwandelt. Als Erkiärung für diesen Wandel schlagen die Autoren ein «Institutionsmodell» vor, da…
The Diverted Dream
The Diverted Dream
What If They Gave a War
Hidden Meanings
This paper is about structural sociology as practiced by one of the more important sociologists and social thinkers of our day-Harrison White, lately of Columbia University. I have chosen this topic because thinking is an important, perhaps the most important, feature of contemporary social thought; because Professor White's approach to the study of social structure is particularly influential; and because, frankly, I have misgivings about certai…
Eliot Freidson's Contribution to the Sociology of Professions
This article discusses three major contributions of Eliot Freidson to the sociology of professions: (a) Freidson's work introduces a new concept of the professions rooted in the social organization of labor markets. This concept is far more harmonious with the contemporary situation of professions than any previous effort to conceptualize the differences between professions and other occupations. (b) The work provides an analysis of the spheres o…
In an Age of Experts
Since the 1960s the number of highly educated professionals in America has grown dramatically. During this time scholars and journalists have described the group as exercising increasing influence over cultural values and public affairs. The rise of this putative "new class" has been greeted with idealistic hope or ideological suspicion on both the right and the left. In an Age of Experts challenges these characterizations, showing that claims ab…
Testing Testing
In an Age of Experts
Political science (44 works) · Sociology (43 works) · Law (22 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Social science (16 works) · Economics (15 works) · Higher Education Governance and Development (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Public relations (12 works)