Schooling and Pathways to Power and Privilege of the best and the Brightest

• In Event: 246 - Regular Session. Schools, Social Mobility, and the Reproduction of Inequality

Abstract

Abstract
How does collegiate experience affect pathways to life success among the best and the brightest? This research is based on the survey of 1019 living Rhodes Scholars who were awarded the scholarship between 1947 and 1992. The survey was followed with intensive interviews of 83 Scholars and fieldwork at five leading producer institutions of Rhodes winners.

The study introduces a two-stage analytical framework that explains how Rhodes winners have successfully attained powerful and privileged positions. At first, childhood cultural capital derived from family milieu leads the key to academic success as evidenced through access to status culture in highly selective post-secondary schooling. The symbolic structure of elite post-secondary schooling and unique experience at Oxford has contributed to unequal access to social resources and subsequent attainment of prominent and powerful positions in society. Furthermore, for Rhodes winners, their powerful and privileged positions were derived from social ties cultivated in prestigious law schools, loose networks that facilitated access to influential media and cultural and political institutions.

The study of generations of Rhodes Scholarship winners provides a unique example of how uncommon advantages accumulated through schooling and distinctive experience in status group culture explains inequality among educated status groups in the American meritocracy.

Author

• Ted I.K. Youn, Boston College