Tag Archives | Higher Education

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Extensive research reveals employer biases against workers with career disruptions, particularly those related to caregiving. However, the effectiveness of organizational practices intended to mitigate such biases is less well understood. This study examines the use of COVID-19 impact statements in tenure decisions at research universities, an organizational intervention that was designed to reduce biases but raised concerns that it might inadvertently amplify them. Contrary to concerns about unintended consequences, a pre-registered survey experiment with 602 full professors in STEM fields reveals that the inclusion of impact statements leads to more favorable tenure evaluations, regardless of faculty gender and disruption type. Qualitative evidence suggests that perceptions of pandemic-related disruptions as legitimate, externally imposed, time-limited events in the past help circumvent previously documented biases. This study enhances our understanding of organizational practices that effectively mitigate biases and points to the potential role of narrative framing in workplace evaluations and organizational inequalities.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lauren A. Rivera: Department of Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
E-mail: L-rivera@kellogg.northwestern.edu

Katherine Weisshaar: Department of Sociology, Northwestern University
E-mail: kate.weisshaar@northwestern.edu

András Tilcsik: Department of Strategic Management, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
E-mail: andras.tilcsik@rotman.utoronto.ca

Acknowledgements: We are deeply grateful to Jeannette Colyvas for formative discussions about COVID-19 impact statements. We also thank Anne Bowers, Clayton Childress, Stefan Dimitriadis, Laura Doering, Alicia Eads, Angelina Grigoryeva, Ryann Manning, Santiago Campero Molina, Sida Liu, Katherine Spoon, the Toronto Group of Seven, participants at the International Conference on Science of Science and Innovation, and seminar participants at the Amsterdam Centre for Inequality Studies, Stanford University, and Columbia University for useful feedback on early drafts.

Replication Package: Deidentified survey data and the code needed to replicate the findings are available at https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/UAM9PJ.

Citation: Rivera, Lauren A., Katherine Weisshaar, and András Tilcsik. 2024. “Disparate Impact? Career Disruptions and COVID-19 Impact Statements in Tenure Evaluations. Sociological Science 11: 626-648.
Received: May 13, 2024
Accepted: June 17, 2024
Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Kristen Schilt
DOI: 10.15195/v11.a23

Still a Small World? University Course Enrollment Networks before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Parker Webservices on January 21, 2021 in Articles

Kim A. Weeden, Benjamin Cornwell, Barum Park

Sociological Science January 21, 2021
10.15195/v8.a4

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In normal times, the network ties that connect students on a college campus are an asset; during a pandemic, they can become a liability. Using prepandemic data from Cornell University, Weeden and Cornwell (2020) showed how co-enrollment in classes creates a “small world” network with high clustering, short path lengths, and multiple independent pathways connecting students. Using data from the fall of 2020, we assess how the structure of the co-enrollment network changed as Cornell, like many other institutions of higher education, adapted to the pandemic by adopting a hybrid instructional model. We find that under hybrid instruction, not only is a much smaller share of students in the face-to-face network, but the paths connecting student pairs in the network lengthened, the share of student pairs connected by three or fewer degrees of separation declined, clustering increased, and a greater share of co-enrollment ties occurred between students in the same field of study. The small world became both less connected and more fragmented.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Kim A. Weeden: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: kw74@cornell.edu

Benjamin Cornwell: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: btc49@cornell.edu

Barum Park: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: b.park@cornell.edu

Acknowledgments: Direct correspondence to Kim A. Weeden, Department of Sociology, Cornell University; kw74@cornell.edu. We acknowledge Cornell University’s administration for generously and promptly providing access to anonymized data.

Citation: Weeden, Kim A., Benjamin Cornwell, and Barum Park. 2021. “Still a Small World? University Course Enrollment Networks before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Sociological Science 8: 73-82.
Received: November 19, 2020
Accepted: December 18, 2020
Editors: Mario Small
DOI: 10.15195/v8.a4

The Small-World Network of College Classes: Implications for Epidemic Spread on a University Campus

By Parker Webservices on May 27, 2020 in Articles

Kim A. Weeden, Benjamin Cornwell

Sociological Science May 27, 2020
10.15195/v7.a9

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To slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, many universities shifted to online instruction and now face the question of whether and how to resume in-person instruction. This article uses transcript data from a medium-sized American university to describe three enrollment networks that connect students through classes and in the process create social conditions for the spread of infectious disease: a university-wide network, an undergraduate-only network, and a liberal arts college network. All three networks are “small worlds” characterized by high clustering, short average path lengths, and multiple independent paths connecting students. Students from different majors cluster together, but gateway courses and distributional requirements create cross-major integration. Connectivity declines when large courses of 100 students or more are removed from the network, as might be the case if some courses are taught online, but moderately sized courses must also be removed before less than half of student-pairs are connected in three steps and less than two-thirds in four steps. In all simulations, most students are connected through multiple independent paths. Hybrid models of instruction can reduce but not eliminate the potential for epidemic spread through the small worlds of course enrollments.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Kim A. Weeden: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: kw74@cornell.edu

Benjamin Cornwell: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: btc49@cornell.edu

Acknowledgments: Dr. Weeden and Dr. Cornwell contributed equally to this project. The authors thank the Cornell University administration, and in particular Dr. Lisa Nishii, for facilitating access to the data; Lauren Griffin and Alec McGail for research assistance; and Jake Burchard, Scott Feld, John Schneider, Demival Vasques Filho, Barry Wellman, Erin York Cornwell, and two anonymous reviewers for comments and advice. Cornell University had no role in the study design, data analysis, or preparation of the report.

Citation: Weeden, Kim A., and Benjamin Cornwell. 2020. “The Small-World Network of College Classes: Implications for Epidemic Spread on a University Campus.” Sociological Science 7: 222-241.
Received: April 17, 2020
Accepted: May 7, 2020
Editors: Mario Small
DOI: 10.15195/v7.a9

How Much Do You Have to Publish to Get a Job in a Top Sociology Department? Or to Get Tenure? Trends over a Generation

By Parker Webservices on February 27, 2019 in Articles

John Robert Warren

Sociological Science, February 27, 2019
10.15195/v6.a7

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Many sociologists suspect that publication expectations have risen over time—that how much graduate students have published to get assistant professor jobs and how much assistant professors have published to be promoted have gone up. Using information about faculty in 21 top sociology departments from the American Sociological Association’s Guide to Graduate Departments of Sociology, online curricula vitae, and other public records, I provide empirical evidence to support this suspicion. On the day they start their first jobs, new assistant professors in recent years have already published roughly twice as much as their counterparts did in the early 1990s. Trends for promotion to associate professor are not as dramatic but are still remarkable. I evaluate several potential explanations for these trends and conclude that they are driven mainly by changes over time in the fiscal and organizational realities of universities and departments.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

John Robert Warren: Department of Sociology, Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota
E-mail: warre046@umn.edu

Acknowledgements: This article was prepared for presentation at the Sociology Department Workshop at the University of Minnesota, whose College of Liberal Arts’ Dean’s Freshman Research and Creative Scholars program provided support for this project. Support has also come from the Minnesota Population Center, which receives core funding (P2C HD041023) from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. I sincerely thank graduate research assistant Chris Levesque; undergraduate interns Harold Carpenter, Kristina Mann, Charles Massie, Zixiong Peng, and Morgan Schmitt-Morris; and undergraduate research assistants Megan Bursch, James Crim, Julina Duan, Alejandra Narvaez, Shannyn Telander, and Nathan Torunsky for their hard and careful work on this research. I am also very grateful to my colleagues Jack DeWaard, Doug Hartmann, Jonas Helgertz, Jennifer C. Lee, Chandra Muller, Gina Rumore, and Barbara Schneider for providing helpful comments and suggestions. However, errors and omissions are my responsibility. Please direct correspondence to me at warre046@umn.edu.

Citation: Warren, John Robert. 2019. “How Much Do You Have to Publish to Get a Job in a Top Sociology Department? Or to Get Tenure? Trends over a Generation.” Sociological Science 6:172-196.
Received: December 10, 2018
Accepted: January 10, 2018
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
DOI: 10.15195/v6.a7

Degrees of Difference: Gender Segregation of U.S. Doctorates by Field and Program Prestige

By Parker Webservices on February 6, 2017 in Articles

Kim A. Weeden, Sarah Thébaud, Dafna Gelbgiser

Sociological Science, February 6, 2017
DOI 10.15195/v4.a6

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Women earn nearly half of doctoral degrees in research fields, yet doctoral education in the United States remains deeply segregated by gender. We argue that in addition to the oft-noted segregation of men and women by field of study, men and women may also be segregated across programs that differ in their prestige. Using data on all doctorates awarded in the United States from 2003 to 2014, field-specific program rankings, and field-level measures of math and verbal skills, we show that (1) “net” field segregation is very high and strongly associated with field-level math skills; (2) “net” prestige segregation is weaker than field segregation but still a nontrivial form of segregation in doctoral education; (3) women are underrepresented among graduates of the highest-and to a lesser extent, the lowest-prestige programs; and (4) the strength and pattern of prestige segregation varies substantially across fields, but little of this variation is associated with field skills.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Kim A. Weeden: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
Email: kw74@cornell.edu

Sarah Thébaud: Department of Sociology, University of California – Santa Barbara
Email: sthebaud@gmail.com

Dafna Gelbgiser: Center for the Study of Inequality, Cornell University
Email: dg432@cornell.edu

Acknowledgements: We thank Maria Charles, Tom DiPrete, Jesper Sørensen, and Ezra Zuckerman for comments on an earlier draft of this article. Dr. Gelbgiser’s postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University’s Center for the Study of Inequality is supported by a generous grant from The Atlantic Philanthropies.

Citation: Weeden, Kim A., Sarah Thébaud, and Dafna Gelbgiser. 2017. “Degrees of Difference: Gender Segregation of U.S. Doctorates by Field and Program Prestige.” Sociological Science 4: 123-150.
Received: November 19, 2016
Accepted: December 2, 2016
Editors: Sarah Soule
DOI: 10.15195/v4.a6

Gender Differences in the Formation of a Field of Study Choice Set

By Jesper Sorensen on February 18, 2015 in Articles

Sigal Alon, Thomas A. DiPrete

Sociological Science, February 18, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a5

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Women now surpass men in overall rates of college graduation in many industrialized countries, but sex segregation in fields of study persists. In a world where gender norms have changed but gender stereotypes remain strong, we argue that men’s and women’s attitudes and orientations toward fields of study in college are less constrained by gendered institutions than is the ranking of these fields. Accordingly, the sex segregation in the broader choice set of majors considered by college applicants may be lower than the sex segregation in their first preference field of study selection. With unique data on the broader set of fields considered by applicants to elite Israeli universities, we find support for this theory. The factors that drive the gender gap in the choice of field of study, in particular labor market earnings, risk aversion, and the sex composition of fields, are weaker in the broad set of choices than in the first choice. The result is less segregation in considered majors than in the first choice and, more broadly, different gender patterns in the decision process for the set of considered majors and for the first choice. We consider the theoretical implications of these results.

Sigal Alon: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University. Email: salon1@post.tau.ac.il

Thomas A. DiPrete: Department of Sociology, Columbia University. Email: tad61@columbia.edu