Colleges and Elite Formation: The Case of Prestigious American Colleges

Abstract

This paper presents an argument on the conditions under which colleges will be able to affect the role allocation of students. This view emphasizes that colleges may differ in the kinds of people they are expected to produce and in the kinds of changes in individuals that they can legitimately expect to affect. This general model called the 'charter' is examined with reference to one class of American colleges i.e., academically prestigious schools. After discussing the cultural distribution of goals and functions among colleges, we develop a set of hypotheses on the effects of college prestige on student occupational choice and dropout decisions. Empirical evidence from panel data on students sampled from 99 American colleges is presented in support of the hypotheses. It is common among sociologists to view educational institutions as major role-allocating devices in modem society that connect adolescents with future adult occupational roles and status. This view in turn had led to lively interest and much research at all levels of education on the question of whether educational organizations have autonomous influences on a variety of important role choices that students make. This paper develops an argument about the conditions under which colleges will have an impact on student role decisions, and attempts to illustrate it by examining one class