Stephen Morgan

Stephen Morgan, '93

I am an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Center for the Study of Inequality at Cornell University. As a sophomore, I was introduced to social theory by Mary Waters and research methods by James Davis and Peter Marsden. As a junior, I then enrolled in Stanley Lieberson' s junior tutorial on naming practices and then a graduate seminar with Aage Sorensen on social stratification. By the end of that year, I was convinced that I wanted to pursue a career as a sociologist. But then, as a senior, I rolled the Fellowships dice and somehow won a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University. Thus, after taking my A.B. in 1993, I delayed my entry into a PhD program in the US and instead first earned an M.Phil in Comparative Social Research at Oxford. I then returned to Harvard in 1995 and received my Ph.D. in Sociology in June of 2000.

Since then, I have been on the faculty at Cornell. My current research focuses on social stratification, the sociology of education, and quantitative methodology. This work is best represented by my 2005 book, On the Edge of Commitment: Educational Attainment and Race in the United States, published by Stanford University Press. Most of my work, however, is published in journal article format, and much of it is available on my website. Like most sociologists, I engage in a variety of research topics all at once. For 2006-07, for example, I am working on separate papers on educational achievement in US high schools, changes in labor market inequality in the United States, and the impact of patronage relationships on youth education in Kano, Nigeria.