Substantial social stratification research conceptualizes education as a series of standard transitions from one stage to the next, such as from high school to college. Yet less research examines mandatory transitions within each educational stage, which we call “intermediate educational transitions.” In this article, we examine a crucial intermediate transition in U.S. higher education, shifting from an undeclared to a declared major by major declaration deadlines, to provide a novel perspective on educational transitions. Bridging theoretical approaches from symbolic interactionism, social stratification, structural functionalism, and neo-institutionalism, we argue that successful major declaration transitions depend on students’ individual-level alignment between socially structured actions and culturally informed goals and organization-level alignment between organizational intentions and organizational actions. We use longitudinal interview data paired with 4.5 years of administrative records to assess this argument, finding that both individual- and organization-level alignment contribute to whether students experience seamless, stalled and restarted, or persistently stalled major declaration transitions. We further find that access to compensatory college organizational support determines whether stalled students can restart their major declaration trajectories. These findings indicate that colleges and universities can help to mitigate inequality in intermediate transitions by providing timely, high-quality support.

中文翻译：

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美国高等教育中的中等教育转型、协调和不平等

大量的社会分层研究将教育概念化为一系列从一个阶段到下一个阶段的标准过渡，例如从高中到大学。然而，很少有研究考察每个教育阶段内的强制性过渡，我们称之为“中间教育过渡”。在本文中，我们研究了美国高等教育的一个关键的中间转型，即在重大申报截止日期之前从未申报专业转变为已申报专业，以提供关于教育转型的新颖视角。结合符号互动主义、社会分层、结构功能主义和新制度主义的理论方法，我们认为，成功的重大宣言转变取决于学生在社会结构化行动和文化目标之间的个人层面的一致性，以及组织意图和目标之间的组织层面的一致性。组织行动。我们使用纵向访谈数据与 4.5 年的行政记录相结合来评估这一论点，发现个人和组织层面的一致性都有助于学生是否经历无缝、停滞和重新启动，或持续停滞的重大声明过渡。我们进一步发现，获得补偿性大学组织支持决定了陷入困境的学生是否可以重新启动他们的专业申报轨迹。这些发现表明，学院和大学可以通过提供及时、高质量的支持来帮助减轻中间转型过程中的不平等。