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On stratification in changing higher education: the “analysis of status” revisited

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Abstract

This article seeks to shed light on current dynamics of stratification in changing higher education and proposes an analytical perspective to account for these dynamics based on Martin Trow’s work on “the analysis of status.” In research on higher education, the term “stratification” is generally understood as a metaphor that describes a stable vertical order. In sectors that are experiencing considerable change, such an order is still in the making. In following Trow, we propose to look at stratification as an open ordering process that constructs verticality. We distinguish between sector and field stratification, i.e., between stratification through coercive regulation by the state and through status judgements by a wide range of stakeholders. Within the last decade, field stratification has grown in importance as governments in continental Europe have provided universities with more leeway. Specific devices (rankings, etc.) channel such judgements and construct images of how a field appears. By applying this concept to two empirical cases from German higher education, we will show how devices redefine verticality in higher education through specific field images. First, master rankings in business administration/economics expand the topological boundaries to include degree programs outside national sectors, raise the importance of alumni and increase the recruitment of female students. Second, the Excellence Initiative triggers the construction of a new unregulated sector of doctoral education; excellent graduate schools model themselves along the scales of the field image as selective, interdisciplinary, international, and part of a holistic university image.

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Notes

  1. Within the research project “Elite formation and higher education” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) so far 170 semi-structured interviews with professors, staff, and (PhD-)students have been conducted as well as participant observation of a wide range of program activities.

  2. Trow differentiates between “objective” (state) and “subjective” (market) dimensions. We abstain from using these terms for methodological reasons.

  3. In fact research in new institutionalism is to a large extent more concerned with isomorphism than with stratification

  4. More recently, there has been stronger emphasis on both the microlevel perspective and collective action

  5. Sauder et al. (2012) use the term “intermediaries” to account for the role of rankings in status attribution. We prefer the term “device” as it highlights the materiality of the status ascription and has been analyzed in various forms in the sociology of markets (Fourcade 2007).

  6. i.e., higher teaching loads

  7. There are further rankings like the Handelsblatt, Wirtschaftswoche and various national accreditation agencies.

  8. http://www.che-ranking.de/methodenwiki/index.php/Hauptseite.

  9. Average of all ratings labeled “S” in Fig. 2. These show up in the non-customized ranking.

  10. The accreditation process is lengthy and expensive but also signals status among business schools.

  11. In this, the graduate schools differ from their predecessors, the Research Training Groups (RTG – Graduiertenkollegs) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Though being a “support program for outstanding research and an elite of doctoral researchers” (translated, German Research Foundation 2000), their prestige is tied to the selection procedure of an intra-academic institution for the competitive distribution of research funds and transmitted mainly to the successful applicants. These are groups of professors and not universities. Lacking an institutionalized status, RTGs are inherently temporary in their design, while excellent graduate schools are expected to persist beyond the frame of the Excellence Initiative. They thus increase the size of a university’s third-party research funds but do not invoke field images on their own.

  12. For example, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology lost its excellence status in the Excellence Initiative’s second round because it was not able to retain an excellence cluster.

  13. The German Research Foundation literally provides blueprints for supervision agreements and official regulations of the graduate school (http://www.dfg.de/foerderung/programme/exzellenzinitiative/graduiertenschulen/formulare_merkblaetter/index.jsp)

  14. The numbers are based on a survey of all doctoral programs at German public universities in 2014 which included their date of foundation. The survey however did not include programs that had ceased to exist in the meantime.

  15. In 2005/06, the Excellence Initiative sparked 262 draft proposals (Antragsskizzen) to establish a graduate school, out of which 39 were eventually funded. Universities submitted another 98 draft proposals in 2011 for the second phase (German Research Foundation and German Council of Science and Humanities 2015: 13). Some Land government started to fund their own Excellence Initiatives to increase the competitiveness of their (unsuccessful) universities.

  16. Of the 516 doctoral programs run by single universities or faculties plus the 45 excellent graduate schools, only two mention concrete rankings on their webpages.

  17. Maeße (2015) shows this for economics departments in Germany and Britain.

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Acknowledgments

The article is based on research conducted within the project “Elite Formation and Universities” as part of the DFG Research Unit “Mechanisms of Elite Formation in the German Educational System” (FOR 1612).

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  1. Institute of Sociology, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, 06099, Halle (Saale), Germany

    Roland Bloch & Alexander Mitterle

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Correspondence to Roland Bloch.

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Paper submitted for the special issue “The New Political Economy of Higher Education”

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Bloch, R., Mitterle, A. On stratification in changing higher education: the “analysis of status” revisited. High Educ 73, 929–946 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0113-5

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