What is it like to be a graduate student in a sociology department dominated by senior white male faculty with deeply conservative intellectual commitments? In this landmark article, Eric Margolis and Mary Romero document how the hidden curriculum of graduate sociology departments functions to reproduce race, class, and gender inequalities among the next generation of scholars.
Based on extensive interviews with graduate students, the article reveals a pattern of departmental culture in which theoretical orthodoxy is enforced through informal channels — through the allocation of research assistantships, the composition of dissertation committees, the social dynamics of departmental gatherings, and the subtle signals that communicate which students and which ideas truly belong.
Published in the Harvard Educational Review, this article became one of the most widely cited studies of graduate education and helped establish the hidden curriculum as a central concept in the sociology of higher education.
Read the Full Article
Cite This Work
Eric Margolis and Mary Romero (1998). The Department is Very Male, Very White, Very Old, Very Conservative. Harvard Educational Review, 68(1).
