Still Striving, and for What? Centering Equity in the Study of Prestige Seeking in Higher Education

Abstract

As policymakers, administrators, and researchers, we give attention to identifying and addressing the deeply ingrained and often-overlooked aspects of work in higher education that is complicit in producing inequity. One significant area where these critical approaches can be better extended is in the work around prestige in higher education. Importantly, the pursuit of prestige has been noted to have problematic implications for equity, including diminished access for marginalized students, minimizing voices of faculty in the academy, and an overall weakening of the public good of the university. This chapter seeks to deepen our understanding of prestige and its role in creating, shaping, and perpetuating inequity within higher education. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how an equity focus can be more strongly centered in research on prestige in higher education through the expansion of foci in studies on striving and the diversification of paradigms, theoretical lenses, methods, and institutional contexts. In so doing, this work aims to contribute to the body of research on prestige and offer further direction for researchers, institutional leaders, and policymakers.KeywordsPrestige seekingEquityCritical researchPrestigeInequityHigher education environmentCritical research