Cascading in Public Higher Education: Tacking Institutional Stratification

Research will contribute to the understanding of stratification in access to postsecondary education (hereby "institutional stratification"). We define institutional stratification as the extent to which access to specific types of postsecondary education institutions (hereby "institutions") differs by socioeconomic status, gender, and ethnicity. Fundamental to the study of institutional stratification is the rejection of dichotomous measures of access in favor of more nuanced measures of institutional type, ranging from technical and community colleges, to non-selective 4-year institutions, and to 4-year institutions having varying levels of selectivity. This research will test a range of hypotheses about institutional stratification through a single analysis dataset already constructed from NCES data through prior funding.