Prestige at Play
University Hierarchies and the Reproduction of Funding Inequalities
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7149189 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Julien Larregue (0000-0003-4319-1129, Université Laval, corresponding author), Alice Pavie (0009-0001-7073-7660, Université Laval) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | e70012-e70012 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1755-6171 • E-ISSN: 1755-618X |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/cars.70012 |
| PMID | 40815578 |
| OpenAlex | W4413258145 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 45 |
This article examines the relationship between university prestige, disciplinary cultures, and the (re)production of funding inequalities in the humanities and social sciences. We combine qualitative and quantitative methods by analyzing: (1) data on 56,680 successful and unsuccessful grant applications submitted to the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council ; (2) 43 interviews with past members of review committees, including in economics, history, sociology, and political science. Our findings show that university affiliations significantly influence funding allocation: even after controlling for other factors, scholars at more prestigious and larger institutions are more likely to secure grants for greater amounts. For the Insight grants, applicants affiliated with U3 universities receive, on average, nearly 20,000$ more than their colleagues from institutions outside the U15. This effect is strongest in disciplines where scientific quality is clearly defined and tightly linked to institutional status. In contrast, in disciplines where the definition of merit is more ambiguous and debated, evaluators rely less on university affiliation, and prestige plays a diminished role. These divergences highlight the need to distinguish between the formal, general norms adopted by funding agencies and the unwritten, situated norms that review committees rely on to evaluate and rank applications within their respective fields
Biology · Geography · Inequality · Political science · Prestige · Reproduction · Sociology · Diversity and Career in Medicine · Global Health Workforce Issues · Mathematics · Philosophy · Radiology practices and education · Ecology
How Professors Think
Bibliometrics and Research Evaluation
Systematic inequality and hierarchy in faculty hiring networks
Publishing and Promotion in Economics
Race, Ethnicity, and NIH Research Awards
Global citation inequality is on the rise
Chance and Consensus in Peer Review
The Matthew effect in science funding
Concentration or dispersal of research funding
Transgresser les frontières en sciences humaines et sociales en France
Granting Inequities
L’origine sociale des disciplines
L’embauche dans les départements de science politique francophone au Québec et au Canada. Un bilan des années 2000-20101
Cumulative Advantage as a Mechanism for Inequality
Academic judgments under uncertainty
The Scientific Research Output of U.S. Research Universities, 1980–2010
Canadian Foreign Policy
Departmental Effects on Scientific Productivity
How to become a judgment device
Les revues canadiennes en sciences sociales et humaines
La spécificité du Québec et du Canadadans les méthodologies en sociologie1
The Matthew Effect in Science, II
Dynamique et structure du marché de l'emploi universitaire québécois dans les disciplines des sciences sociales, 1900-2020
Une discipline clivée
A Sociology of Quantification
Law and Social Change
The Superiority of Economists
The specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions of the progress of reason
Knowledge Hierarchies and Gender Disparities in Social Science Funding
Promoting Diversity but Striving for Excellence
Commensuration as a Social Process
Gender inequalities in research funding
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |