Institutional exclusion: the cultural production of educational inequality through college narratives
Dados Bibliográficos
| AUTOR(ES) | |
|---|---|
| AFILIAÇÃO(ÕES) | Department of Sociology, Stanford University , 450 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305 ,, EM Lyon Business School , 144 Avenue Jean Jaurès, 69007 Lyon , |
| ANO | Não informado |
| TIPO | Artigo |
| PERIÓDICO | Social Forces |
| ISSN | 0037-7732 |
| E-ISSN | 1534-7605 |
| EDITORA | Routledge (United Kingdom) |
| DOI | 10.1093/sf/soaf099 |
| CITAÇÕES | 1 |
| ADICIONADO EM | 2025-08-18 |
Resumo
Explanations of socioeconomic inequalities in college enrollment focus on college readiness, financial constraints, and information deficits. We provide a cultural explanation of educational inequalities, arguing that disadvantaged students are deterred from applying to high-status colleges because of the shared cultural narratives employed by those colleges—a mechanism that we label 'institutional exclusion.' Computational text analyses of college mission statements show that community colleges, for-profit colleges, and four-year colleges draw upon distinctively different cultural narratives. To gauge the causal effect of these narratives on student responses, we designed a survey experiment for a sample of high-school seniors. We find that the career-focused narratives of for-profit colleges are most appealing to disadvantaged students, whereas advantaged students prefer the post-materialist rhetoric of four-year colleges. We conclude that institutional exclusion should be included in sociological discussions of college inequalities and the promotion of diversity in organizations.