Steven Brint is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside, Director of the Colleges & Universities 2000 Project, and a Principal Researcher in the SERU Consortium.
Brint is an organizational sociologist whose research focuses on topics in the sociology of higher education, the sociology of professions, and middle-class politics. His studies of higher education have been funded for two decades by the National Science Foundation and two philanthropies. He is the author of four books: The Diverted Dream (with Jerome Karabel) (Oxford University Press, 1989), In an Age of Experts (Princeton University Press, 1994), and Schools and Societies (third ed. Stanford University Press 2016), and Two Cheers for Higher Education (Princeton University Press 2018). He is the editor of The Future of the City of Intellect (Stanford University Press, 2002), and the co-editor (with Charles T. Clotfelter) of a volume on higher education effectiveness. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He has also written for The American Prospect, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Washington Post, among other publications. His book, The Diverted Dream, won the American Education Research Association's “Outstanding Book” award of 1991 and the Council of Colleges and Universities' “Outstanding Research Publication” award the same year. His article, “Socialization Messages in Primary Schools: An Organizational Analysis.” (with Mary F. Contreras and Michael T. Matthews) won the American Sociological Association's Willard Waller Award in 2002. His book, Two Cheers for Higher Education, won honorable mention for the American Sociological Association’s Pierre Bourdieu Award in 2019 and was co-recipient of the Emory Elliott Book Prize for 2019. It was named one of the top 10 books on higher education for 2019. Brint’s work has been translated into Chinese, Dutch, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Sociological Research Association.
A native of Albuquerque, NM, Steven Brint received his BA with highest honors from the University of California, Berkeley in 1973 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1982.
Recent Publications
- Steven Brint, “Universities and the Institutional Geography of Knowledge Exchange: Producers, Exports, Imports, Trade Routes, and Meta-Cognitive Metropoles.” 2018. Pp. 115-143 in Jal Mehta and Scott Davies (eds.) Education in a New Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Steven Brint and Sarah R.K. Yoshikawa. 2017. “The Educational Backgrounds of American Business and Government Leaders: Status Reproduction, Open Elite, or Sector Variation?” Social Forces 96: 561-90.
- Steven Brint and Cynthia E. Carr. 2017. “Scientific Research Productivity in U.S. Research Universities, 1980-2010: Continuing Dispersion, Increasing Concentration, or Stable Inequality?” Minerva. DOI: 10.1007/s11024-017-9330-4
The U.S. Graduate Student Experience; Graduate Education and Social Stratification; The Educational Backgrounds of Business, Political, and Cultural Leaders; Science Policy in the U.S. and China
