Mapping the Network of North American Colleges and Universities: A New Approach to Empirically-Derived Classifications

• In Event: 435 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 22. Special Topics in Education: Schools as Organizations

Abstract

This paper draws on a relationally-networked dataset of 1,292 degree-granting colleges and universities in North America to enhance our understanding of the structure of the higher education organizational field. It examines a variety of properties of this higher education network and utilizes several approaches to assessing network centrality in order to reveal which colleges and universities may actually serve as centers of innovation, bridges between network components, and brokers of new ideas. Furthermore, it uses a modularity class approach to develop a new empirically-derived classification scheme for colleges and universities based on their own self-defined peer institutions. Finally, the paper assesses the utility of the modularity class scheme and several measures of network centrality for predicting offerings of three particular curricular programs. The approaches suggested in this paper will be useful for future analysts seeking to explain the spread of innovations and behaviors across the higher education institutional field.

Author

• Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur, Rhode Island College