Description

In the first section, I present a brief overview of the problem of access to PSE in the US, focusing on financial and academic barriers. Additionally, I portray the importance of attaining a PSE by pointing out individual benefits from it.
In the second section, I present an overview of the major theories addressing PSE access: rational choice, social reproduction, and status attainment.
In the third section, I review approaches to social capital often used in the sociology of education literature, focusing on the contributions of Bourdieu, Coleman, and Lin. Then, I synthesize the major concepts in social capital theory that are relevant for explaining inequalities in access to PSE. I conclude this section by identifying three ways in which social capital may generate returns related to an individual education.
In the fourth section, I review empirical research on postsecondary education access in which social capital constructs have been incorporated into explanatory models. I analyze and critique these empirical works’ conceptual frameworks, measures of social capital included, and the modeling approaches applied. Finally, I summarize relevant findings on social capital effects on PSE access and point out some of their limitations.
In the fifth section, I dig more into the limitations found in the PSE access literature. I focus on three major limitations: 1) conceptual vagueness; 2) weaknesses in testable postulates; and 3) lack of reliable measures. Then, I propose some guiding ideas on how to avoid conceptual tautologies, how to develop robust testable social capital postulates, and how to develop reliable measures of social capital constructs.
In the sixth, closing section, I draw a framework for studying social capital effects in PSE access that should help to fill conceptual gaps in the literature, and propose directions for measuring social capital variables.