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In the United States, women are more likely than men to enter and complete college, but they remain underrepresented among baccalaureates in science-related majors. We show that in a cohort of college entrants who graduated from high school in 2004, men were more than twice as likely as women to complete baccalaureate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, including premed fields, and more likely to persist in STEM/biomed after entering these majors by sophomore year. Conversely, women were more than twice as likely as men to earn baccalaureates in a health field, although persistence in health was low for both genders. We show that gender gaps in high school academic achievement, self-assessed math ability, and family-work orientation are only weakly associated with gender gaps in STEM completion and persistence. Gender differences in occupational plans, by contrast, are strongly associated with gender gaps in STEM outcomes, even in models that assume plans are endogenous to academic achievement, self-assessed math ability, and family-work orientation. These results can inform efforts to mitigate gender gaps in STEM attainment.

It is well established that students from different socioeconomic backgrounds attend different colleges, net of their academic preparation. An unintended consequence of these disparities is that in the aggregate, they enhance socioeconomic segregation across institutions of higher education, cultivating separate and distinct social environments that can influence students’outcomes. Using information on the academic careers of a nationally representative sample of U.S. high school students who entered college in the mid-2000s, matched with external information on the social context of each college, this study evaluates the extent of socioeconomic segregation by social context in higher education and its implications for socioeconomic inequality in bachelor’s degree attainment. Results confirm that social context is highly consequential for inequality in student outcomes. First, disparities in social context are extensive, even after differences in demographics, skills, attitudes, and college characteristics are accounted for. Second, the social context of campus, as shaped by segregation, is a robust predictor of students’likelihood of obtaining a bachelor’s degree. Finally, the degree attainment rates of all students are positively associated with higher concentrations of economic advantages on campus. Combined, these results imply that socioeconomic segregation across colleges exacerbates disparities in degree attainment by placing disadvantaged students in social environments that are least conducive to their academic success.

The recent expansion of for-profit colleges in US higher education has ignited much debate over the potential contributions, and limitations, of profit-maximizing educational businesses to socioeconomic inequality. For-profit colleges have a strong economic incentive to retain students, and can offer innovative services in order to compete with more established institutions. But for-profit colleges may also seek to increase revenues in ways that are not beneficial for student outcomes. Using detailed longitudinal information on a nationally representative sample of recent high school students (ELS 2002), this paper provides the first comprehensive and systematic assessment of the effect of attendance at for-profit colleges on socioeconomic inequality in student outcomes, measured as the attainment of bachelor’s degrees. Results from logit models and weighted regression technique indicate that low-SES students that attend for-profit colleges are substantially less likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than observationally similar students that attend non-profit open admission colleges. By contrast, enrollment at for-profit colleges has little bearing on the likelihood of high-SES students to earn a bachelor’s degree. These findings suggest that for-profit colleges contribute to the maintenance of socioeconomic disadvantage, in that low-SES students with mobility aspirations are paying more for their education and yet are less likely to reap the benefits of their investment.

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.

Using the example of green fields of study in higher education, which emerged largely in response to the growing prominence of the environmental movement over recent decades, this article posits that new and emerging fields of study can be an important source of change in gender segregation across fields of study. We suggest that new and emerging fields of study, when framed outside of existing gender divisions, may transcend established gender divisions and be characterized by greater gender integration in both STEM and non-STEM disciplines. Patterns of gender segregation among over 9 million bachelor’s degree recipients between 2009 and 2013 confirm that green programs are systematically characterized by greater gender equality relative to non-green fields, regardless of their STEM classification. Further, the more gender imbalanced the “parent” field, the greater the difference we find in the gender composition of green and non-green programs. These results imply that green programs are promoting greater gender equality across the higher education system, underscoring the effect of the organizational structure of higher education, such as the structure of fields of study available to students, on gender segregation in the academy.

After introducing alternative perspectives on assimilation and acculturation, we use the 2002-2012 waves of the Education Longitudinal Study to model differences in educational attainment for students sampled as high school sophomores in 2002. We focus on patterns observed for the growing Mexican immigrant population, analyzing separately the trajectories of 1st, 1.5th, 2nd, and 3rd+ generation Mexican immigrant students, in comparison to 3rd+ generation students who self-identify as non-Hispanic whites and students who self-identify as non-Hispanic blacks or African Americans. The results suggest that the dissonant acculturation mechanism associated with the segmented assimilation perspective is mostly unhelpful for explaining patterns of educational attainment, especially for the crucial groups of 1.5th and 2nd generation Mexican immigrant students. Instead, standard measures of family background can account for large portions of group differences in bachelor's degree attainment, with or without additional adjustments for behavioral commitment to schooling, occupational plans, and educational expectations. The broad structure of inequality in the United States, as well as the rising costs of bachelor's degrees, should be the primary source of concern when considering the prospects for the incorporation of the children of recent Mexican immigrants into the mainstream.