Educational Studies Seminar Spring 2026

Catalog description

This course explores how the pursuit of a college degree functions both as a mechanism for reproducing inequality and as a pathway for social mobility in the United States. Students will engage with foundational and contemporary theories of social stratification and education to analyze how educational systems reproduce or mitigate inequality. This course is organized around three key junctures in the path towards college degree attainment: the transition from high school to college, experiences within higher education, and movement from college to the labor market. We will explore topics like access to highly selective institutions, college experiences of first-generation students, and how labor market ‘success’ varies by major and the institution that the degree is from. Students will design a research-informed intervention aimed at reducing an identified form of inequality within higher education.