The Merit - Diversity Paradox in Doctoral Admissions

323 Pages·2013·1.12 MB·English

by  Julie Posselt

The Merit - Diversity Paradox in Doctoral Admissions:
Examining Situated Judgment in Faculty Decision Making
by
Julie Renee Posselt

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(Higher Education)
in The University of Michigan
2013

Doctoral committee:

Associate Professor Michael N. Bastedo, Chair
Associate Professor Deborah Faye Carter, Claremont Graduate University
Associate Professor Janet H. Lawrence
Professor Janet Weiss
© Julie Renee Posselt
2013
To the McNair Scholars and colleagues
who inspired this research.

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Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to all who encouraged this research and who encouraged me
in the years I have been conducting it. It’s been said that it takes a village to do
everything from raise a child to win a presidential election, and this project has taught me
that it also takes a village to finish a dissertation. Truly, I could not have finished this
without my community of colleagues, family, friends, and mentors—not to mention the
babysitters, bus drivers, neighbors, and others who have helped sustain the infrastructure
of everyday life in my family.
First, I thank each of the participants in this research study, especially the
department and admissions committee chairs with whom I partnered. Their willingness
to be interviewed and observed made this study possible, and their trust and candor is the
foundation of my findings.
I am very grateful to Michael Bastedo for his strong support of this study from the
first time I pitched the idea to him in the hallway late on a Friday afternoon. He pushed
me to a project scope and level of quality that have stretched me, providing thoughtful
and timely feedback at every step so that the high bar was always within reach. Every
doctoral student deserves mentoring like this.
Likewise, Deborah Carter enriched my doctoral education in so many ways. We
worked closely for five years through her research group, and I hope through that work to
have absorbed more than a bit of her approach to thinking critically and constructively
about access and equity. She provided vital feedback when the framework for this study
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was being established, and helped me debrief difficult interviews and navigate options at
turning points in the research process.
Janet Lawrence has been with this research and gently refining it since it was
purely hypothetical in a research design course. She is a rock, and I can’t imagine having
done this project without her steady care. Janet Weiss has been a wonderful asset to my
committee. Her expertise on graduate education in research universities has sharpened
my thinking and brought nuance and structure to my arguments.
Linda Rayle, Melinda Richardson, and Joan McCoy helped ensure my progress
toward completion in small and large ways. Ed St. John, Phil Bowman, and Larry
Rowley brought organization to my thinking about academic merit and institutional
diversity in relation to power and social identities. I also thank Steve DesJardins, Lisa
Lattuca, Valerie Lee, Elizabeth Moje, and AnneMarie Palincsar, who provided valuable
feedback on this work and its preliminary findings. And I have to acknowledge Eric
Dey, whose research on the benefits of diversity helped inspire me to pursue a research
career. He also convinced me to come to Michigan and shared kernels of encouragement
that I will always carry with me. I know I’m not alone as a higher education researcher
in striving for scholarship and collegiality that honors his legacy.
Johanna Masse, Rosie Perez, and Kerri Wakefield have been (and without a doubt
will continue to be) a wonderful source of friendship and intellectual community. I also
thank Nick Bowman and Anat Levtov and the CSHPE students-who-are-parents for their
support, especially Shelley Strickland, Lara Badke, and Cassie Barnhardt. Julio Cardona-
Raya, Karen Downing, Gloryvee Lisa Fonseca-Bolorin, Angela Locks, Carmen
McCallum, and Pelema Morrice taught me so much in the Carter research group, and I
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will remember our laughter and login passwords forever. Ozan Jaquette, Matt Holsapple,
and Rob Bielby, ironically three quant guys, have encouraged me more than anyone else
in my pursuit of mixed methods research. Fellow members of the inimitable 2007 cohort
– those named above plus Nathan Harris, Jiyun Kim, Karen Moronski, Eunjong Ra, and
Kate Thirolf— provided the first feedback on this research design. Two years later,
discussing early findings with the 2012 advanced organizational theory seminar re-
energized me for the second year of data analysis and provided clear avenues for refining
my results.
I benefitted greatly from conversations about this study with generous minds
outside the UM School of Education. Special thanks to Liliana Garces and Mitchell
Stevens for their insights and support at key points in the research process. In addition,
Renee Anspach, Ann Austin, Kimberly Griffin, Chris Golde, Patti Gumport, Pat Gurin,
Michele Lamont, Dan Little, and Marcela Muñiz provided perspective on research design
strategies, conceptual framing, preliminary findings, and implications of the work. I
mentioned that it takes a village and, in this case, the village spans 3000 miles.
This study was financially supported by the Center for Public Policy in Diverse
Societies, the National Association of Graduate Admissions Professionals, and the UM
Rackham Graduate School. I hope the quality of the product is commensurate with my
gratitude for their investment.
Mary Ann Spitale provided skilled and efficient transcription on 75% of the
interviews. I would no doubt still be transcribing interviews without her support. Twice
a week child care from Chelsea Jones in Winter 2011 and Jessica VanDusen in Winter
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2012 allowed me to collect data in the window between the end of my Danny boy’s
school day and the Posselt family dinner hour.
Finally, I thank my family, whose decades of love, faith, and support is the
foundation for my work and career. My wonderful parents, Janet and Gary Schmidt,
instilled in me from a young age dispositions that make a good researcher—curiosity,
persistence, and a love for reading and writing. Wendy and John Posselt have modeled
writing as a daily habit and professional excellence, respectively. My son, Daniel
Posselt, brings sunshine to every day, and has provided the sweetest possible motivation
for maintaining a healthy work-life balance. And, lastly, for baking the countless pans of
brownies that have helped us work late to meet deadlines, for enduring trial runs of half-
baked interpretations, for encouraging me to take the risk of pursuing this project, for the
sacrifices my Ph.D. has required of him, and for sharing in all that is most important to
me, I thank my incredible husband, Derek Posselt.

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Table of Contents
Dedication ........................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iii
Figures................................................................................................................................ ix
Tables .................................................................................................................................. x
Appendices ......................................................................................................................... xi
Abstract ............................................................................................................................. xii
Chapter 1: Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1
Research Focus and Questions ..................................................................................................... 3
Defining the Scope ....................................................................................................................... 6
Defining Core Concepts ............................................................................................................... 9
Contributions of the Research .................................................................................................... 20
Chapter 2: Conceptual Framework ................................................................................... 22
Situated Judgment ...................................................................................................................... 23
Institutional Logics ..................................................................................................................... 24
Norms, Institutions, and Scripts ................................................................................................. 26
Judging Merit in Higher Education Contexts ............................................................................. 27
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 40
Chapter 3: Methodology .................................................................................................. 42
Case Study as a Methodology .................................................................................................... 43
Sampling..................................................................................................................................... 45
Recruitment ................................................................................................................................ 48
Data Collection ........................................................................................................................... 50
Data Management ...................................................................................................................... 58
Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................. 59
Case Development and Cross-Case Analysis ............................................................................. 61
Protecting Participant Confidentiality ........................................................................................ 62
Trustworthiness and Reliability.................................................................................................. 63
Limitations ................................................................................................................................. 64
Researcher’s Role and Establishing Rapport ............................................................................. 66
Structure of the Findings ............................................................................................................ 70
Chapter 4: Faculty Decision Making as Deliberative Bureaucracy .................................. 71
“Send it out to the experts”: Committee Formation and Work Delegation ................................ 74
“Just a numbers game”: Quantifying Judgment ......................................................................... 84
“We definitely try to make people happy”: Refocusing Deliberations ...................................... 91
Costs of Deliberative Bureaucracy ............................................................................................. 96
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 102
Chapter 5: Evaluative Scripts of Merit and Diversity in Ph.D. Admissions.................. 105
Initial Conceptualization of Merit: Numbers in Context .......................................................... 107
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Understanding Reliance on Conventional Achievement .......................................................... 108
Merit, Diversity, and Risk Aversion in Linguistics .................................................................. 114
Making Sense of Merit on the Short List ................................................................................. 121
Discussion ................................................................................................................................ 140
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 143
Chapter 6: Disciplinary Logics: The Influence of Academic Disciplines on Faculty
Judgment ......................................................................................................................... 146
Analytic Congruence of Disciplines and Institutional Logics .................................................. 147
Disciplinary Logics and Paradigm Strength ............................................................................. 149
Comparative Analysis of Disciplinary Cases ........................................................................... 151
Disciplinary Logic Profiles ...................................................................................................... 155
Attitudes on Interviewing as Windows into Disciplinary Logics ............................................ 164
Particularistic Judgment in Low-Consensus Disciplines ......................................................... 171
Disconfirming Evidence for Disciplinary Effects on Judgment ............................................... 184
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 187
Chapter 7: Four Homophilies: Individual-Level Preferences in Low Consensus
Disciplines....................................................................................................................... 191
Faculty Awareness and Practice of Homophily ....................................................................... 194
Homophily of the Pedigreed..................................................................................................... 196
Homophily of the Cool ............................................................................................................. 201
Geographic Homophily ............................................................................................................ 206
Social Mobility Homophily ...................................................................................................... 210
Socially Mobile and International Faculty Rewriting Scripts .................................................. 215
Disconfirming Evidence: Heterophilic Preferences ................................................................. 217
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 223
Chapter 8: Conclusions .................................................................................................. 225
Summary .................................................................................................................................. 226
Synthesis................................................................................................................................... 230
Contributions ............................................................................................................................ 235
Implications .............................................................................................................................. 243
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 252
Appendices ...................................................................................................................... 256
References ....................................................................................................................... 286

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Figures

Figure 1.1. Racial/ Ethnic Composition of Doctorate Earners in the U.S., 2010…………...…17

Figure 1.2. Racial/Ethnic Stratification in Tenure Track Faculty in the U.S., Fall 2007...……18

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