Research Findings

Asian Americans have been averaging very high levels of education since the mid-20^th century, with a much higher likelihood of completing college degrees than their similarly aged peers from other racial/ethnic groups. 

A recent qualitative study conducted by Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou argues that Asian Americans not only average high levels of education, but Asian Americans’ educational chances are also less hampered by having parents with low education levels than other racial/ethnic groups. 

This argument flies against traditional sociological arguments about education. Foundational social mobility theory contends that parents’ education is one of the strongest predictors of their children’s chances of obtaining a college degree or more. For example, first generation college students are much less likely to attend and complete college than their peers whose parents have a college degree. 

The importance of values

The evidence is clear. People want to work for companies that are making a difference in the world, and this has important implications for the need for strong corporate values to attract and retain the best talent. At the same time, companies with strong values often find it challenging to change, because the values they are built on can get in the way of their ability to respond to changes in the environment. 

Generation Y (born in the 80s and 90s) and Generation Z (born in the late 90s and early 2000s) want to make the world a better place, and believe that business methods are the best way to do so at scale. They see business leaders having a deeper impact on society than religious or political leaders, and they desire organizations to shift from focusing narrowly on generating profit to balancing social and environmental concerns and making a more positive impact.

Living in the midst of a pandemic, we have all become familiar with the idea of contagion. An epidemic spreads through exposure to an infectious agent, like a novel virus. In a basic contagion model, the spread of a disease is a function of contact with the agent and its degree of infectiousness. Epidemiologists often model the risk of contagion as a function of contact (or frequency or level of contact) with the infected and the agent’s virulence.

When it comes to triggering radical institutional change, do ideas work the same way?

“You have to follow your heart and know that you can do whatever you want in life,” Nels, a free-lance graphic designer tells me.  “I’m trying to convince my kids that you don’t have to pick a job… You can create a life.”

Nels loves his work, but he is open to change. When I ask him what his professional goals are, he answers, “I don’t know what’s next. I could end up in another completely different industry. Whatever I end up in next, if there’s a next, it’s going to be with the same passion.” 

Nels believes that he has power over his career path, freedom in an undetermined future, and clarity in prioritizing work that he loves. These beliefs represent an ideology of work that I’ve coined the passion paradigm.

Millennials are the most educated and the most racially and ethnically diverse adult generation in the U.S. This has led to ongoing hope and hype that Millennials are the turning-point generation in racial/ethnic relations. 

Many have long believed that Millennials will grow up, spread racial tolerance and pro-diversity views in workplaces, and begin work to fix a deeply broken system. Perhaps the post-racial revolution is upon us?

While some survey research on Millennials’ racial attitudes and beliefs supports this notion, our recently published research in Socius presents a less optimistic view.

As a middle school math teacher, I taught at a school serving a wealthy student body and my students had incredibly high test scores. But I had also taught at a school where the majority of students were eligible for free or reduced lunch and my students had incredibly low test scores. In the low-poverty school, I was seemingly a very effective teacher—yet, in the high-poverty school, I was seemingly a very low-quality teacher.

This experience led me to a career as a sociologist focusing on inequities in education. In my most recent study, I investigated the use of test scores to assess the effectiveness of teachers.

Over the last decade, consumer-driven health care elevated customer satisfaction to be the central mission of hospital care. Satisfaction surveys and hotel-style amenities rose hand-in-hand to become central features of U.S. hospitals. This trend has done more harm than good. It focuses everyone’s attention on front-stage aspects of health care over what matters most to patients: excellent medical treatment.

As I discovered in a recent study published in Social Forces with my colleague Xinxiang Chen, satisfaction scores are driven by room and board hospitality, rather than medical quality or patient survival rates. Moreover, when hospitals face greater competition from other facilities, there is higher patient satisfaction, but lower medical quality.

Most of the research on rising economic inequality focuses on technological skill, productivity, and market forces. But of course, that is only part of the story. Just as important is workers’ bargaining power. The weakening of labor unions, which has left workers with less collective power to fight for their own interests, is a major story behind rising economic inequality in recent decades.

In a recent article, I find that rising wages for highly rewarded occupations has very little to do with technological advances, in and of itself, and a lot to do with the politics of production (broadly define) and power.

In the wake of George Floyd’s death and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, many in the United States have become increasingly concerned not only with police brutality, but with the impact of systemic racism in the United States.

One important aspect of systemic racism comes in the form of job quality. There are significant gaps between white and Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino/Latina, and other racial/ethnic minority workers in the United States in this regard. White workers, for instance, tend to receive better pay, more fringe benefits, and have an easier time getting hired than workers of color.

Many large professional firms—such as law firms, accounting firms, consulting firms, and investment banks—make substantial efforts to recruit members of racial and ethnic minority groups at the entry level. However, the numbers of people of color in such firms drop significantly at more senior levels. All too often, these professionals find it difficult to obtain recognition and responsibility, and leave their firms when their initial hopes turn to discouragement. Why does this happen over and over?

An important key to this puzzle lies in the process of skill development in professional work.