November 23, 2009

Administration
Faculty
Staff
Students
Jobs

Projects
Seminars
Working Papers
Publications
Dissertations

Prospective  Students

Programs
Courses
Course Schedule

Data Archive
Library
Pop Index
NIH Public
    Access Policy

Calendar

CRCW
CHW
CMD
PUM
OPR Mail

Search

Thomas J. Espenshade

Professor of Sociology. Ph.D., Economics, Princeton University, 1972. Interests: director of the National Study of College Experience (NSCE) and Campus Life in America Student Survey (CLASS) projects. His past research has concentrated on social demography, with a particular emphasis on population economics, mathematical demography, family and household demography, and contemporary immigration to the United States.

Recent Activities

Affirmative Action Paper

The recent paper on affirmative action, "The Opportunity Cost of Admission Preferences at Elite Universities" Social Science Quarterly, June 2005 (with Chang Chung) is available for download here: http://opr.princeton.edu/faculty/Tje/EspenshadeSSQPtII.pdf

Activities

Thomas Espenshade completed a four-year term as Chair of the Department of Sociology in June 2003. He is a member of the Advisory Board for the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C., of the U.S. Census Advisory Committee of Professional Associations, representing the Population Association of America, of the 2004 Program Committee for the Population Association of America, and of the Working Group on Education and Migration, which forms part of the International Migration Program at the Social Science Research Council. He also serves as a trustee for Wells College. At Princeton, Espenshade directs the National Study of College Experience, and he is collaborating with faculty and administrative colleagues in the CLASS Project, an educational research and policy project in diversity in higher education. He is a member of the Executive Committee for the Center for Migration and Development in the Department of Sociology and of the Undergraduate Committee in the Sociology Department.

Research Projects

Espenshade is directing the National Study of College Experience (NSCE), funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and is a Principal Investigator for the Campus Life in America Student Survey (CLASS Project), funded by the Ford Foundation.

The National Study of College Experience (NSCE) project is being conducted by Thomas Espenshade with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Its primary objective is to learn how courses, activities, social networks, and people's backgrounds affect their experiences in applying to and attending college. Recent research has concentrated on the racial dimensions of college admissions. In one paper, Espenshade, Chang Chung, and graduate student Joan Walling examine how preferences for different types of applicants exercised by admission offices at elite universities influence the number and composition of admitted students. Logistic regression analysis is used to link information on the admission decision for 124,374 applications to applicants' SAT scores, race, athletic ability, and legacy status, among other variables. Micro-simulations illustrate what the effects might be if one were to withdraw preferences for different student groups. Elite universities give added weight in admission decisions to applicants who have SAT scores above 1500, are African American, or are recruited athletes. A smaller, but still important, preference is shown to Hispanic students and to children of alumni. The athlete admission "advantage" has been growing, while the underrepresented minority advantage has declined. Eliminating affirmative action would substantially reduce the share of African Americans and Hispanics among admitted students. Preferences for athletes and legacies, however, only mildly displace members of minority groups.

In a second paper derived from NSCE data, Thomas Espenshade, former graduate student Lauren Hale, and Chang Chung test a "frog pond" model of college admission decisions. They operationalize high school academic context as secondary school average SAT scores and the number of Advanced Placement examinations per high school senior. Using data from more than 45,000 applications to three elite universities in the fall of 1997, they find that high school academic environment is negatively related to the probability of college admission, controlling for a student's scholastic aptitude. A given applicant's chances of being accepted are increased if the individual comes from a high school with relatively less talented students, that is, if he or she is a big frog in a comparatively small pond. They also find that incorporating aggregate high school academic context into models of admission outcomes adds significantly to explained variance, but the influence of institutional variables is small relative to the effects of individual student academic and nonacademic attributes. Their results are consistent with other tests of the "school context hypothesis". They also support work by Davis (1966) who first proposed the frog pond model to explain career aspirations of college men and by Attewell (2001) who adapted this model to a study of the effect of high school class rank on college admission outcomes.

Thomas Espenshade together with other Princeton University faculty and administrative colleagues, including Professors Joan Girgus and Nicole Shelton in Psychology, Dean Nancy Malkiel, and Vice President Janet Dickerson, are directing the Campus Life in America Student Survey (CLASS) with support from the Ford Foundation. They are being assisted by Project Director Marc Weiner and graduate student Alexandria Walton. Approximately five other U.S. universities are collaborating with Princeton on the CLASS project. This study has three aims: (1) to measure the extent of American college students' engagement with diversity experience while in school, to assess their level of satisfaction with these experiences, and to evaluate what university administrators can do from a policy and programmatic standpoint to maximize the educational benefits of diversity. Data will be collected from more than 10,000 freshmen and returning juniors in the fall of 2004. These data will be combined with quantitative and qualitative institutional data in a multi-university analysis.

Recent Publications

Books and Monographs

The International Migration of the Highly Skilled: Demand, Supply, and Development Consequences in Sending and Receiving Countries. W.A. Cornelius, T.J. Espenshade, and I. Salehyan, eds. CCIS Anthology Series, No. 1, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2001.

High-Skilled Migration, special issue of Population Research and Policy Review. T.J. Espenshade and E.H Shin, Guest Editors, Vol. 20, Nos. 1-2, April 2001.

Articles

"High School Academic Environment, Class Rank, and Elite College Admission," T.J. Espenshade, L.E. Hale, and C.Y. Chung, Sociology of Education, forthcoming.

"Self-Efficacy, Stress, and Academic Success in College," A. Zajacova, S.M. Lynch, and T.J. Espenshade, Research in Higher Education, revise and resubmit.

"The Opportunity Cost of Admission Preferences at Elite Universities," Social Science Quarterly, T.J. Espenshade and C.Y. Chung, June 2005, 86(2): 293-305.

"Admission Preferences for Minority Students, Athletes, and Legacies at Elite Universities," T.J. Espenshade, C.Y. Chung, and J.L. Walling, Social Science Quarterly, December 2004, 85(5):1422-1446.

"The Surprising Global Variation in Replacement Fertility," T.J. Espenshade, J.C. Guzman, and C.F. Westoff, Population Research and Policy Review, December 2003, 22(5-6): 575-583.

"Judith Blake." Pp. 101-103 in Paul Demeny and Geoffrey McNicoll, eds., Encyclopedia of Population. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2003.

"Are Immigrants a Drain on the Public Fisc? State and Local Impacts in New Jersey," D.L. Garvey, T.J. Espenshade, and J.M. Scully, Social Science Quarterly, June 2002, 83(2): 537-553.

"Immigrant Incorporation and Political Participation in the United States," S.K. Ramakrishnan and T.J. Espenshade, International Migration Review, Fall 2001, 35(3): 870-909.

"The International Migration of the Highly Skilled: 'High-Tech Braceros' in the Global Labor Market," W.A. Cornelius and T.J. Espenshade. Pp. 3-19 in Wayne A. Cornelius, Thomas J. Espenshade, and Idean Salehyan, eds., The International Migration of the Highly Skilled: Demand, Supply, and Development Consequences in Sending and Receiving Countries, CCIS Anthology Series, No. 1, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies. La Jolla, CA: University of California, San Diego, 2001.

"The Evolution of U.S. Policy toward Employment-Based Immigrants and Temporary Workers: The H-1B Debate in Historical Perspective," M.L. Usdansky and T.J. Espenshade. Pp.23-53 in Wayne A. Cornelius, Thomas J. Espenshade, and Idean Salehyan, eds., The International Migration of the Highly Skilled: Demand, Supply, and Development Consequences in Sending and Receiving Countries, CCIS Anthology Series, No. 1, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies. La Jolla, CA: University of California, San Diego, 2001.

"Immigration of Scientists and Engineers to the United States: Issues and Evidence," J.C. Gurcak, T.J. Espenshade, A. Sparrow, and M. Paskoff. Pp. 55-84 in Wayne A. Cornelius, Thomas J. Espenshade, and Idean Salehyan, eds., The International Migration of the Highly Skilled: Demand, Supply, and Development Consequences in Sending and Receiving Countries, CCIS Anthology Series, No. 1, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies. La Jolla, CA: University of California, San Diego, 2001.

"Editors Introduction," T.J. Espenshade and E.H. Shin, High-Skilled Migration, special issue of Population Research and Policy Review, April 2001, 20(1-2): 3-7.

"Employment and Earnings of Foreign-Born Scientists and Engineers," T.J. Espenshade, M.L. Usdansky, and C.Y. Chung, Population Research and Policy Review, April 2001, 20(1-2): 81-105.

"High-End Immigrants and the Shortage of Skilled Labor," Population Research and Policy Review, April 2001, 20(1-2): 135-141.

" 'Replacement Migration' from the Perspective of Equilibrium Stationary Populations," Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, March 2001, 22(4): 383-389.

"Immigration Legislation of the 1980s and 1990s." Pp. 215-220 in James D. Ciment, ed., Encyclopedia of American Immigration. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001.

"Public Opinion and Immigration." Pp. 560-568 in James D. Ciment, ed., Encyclopedia of American Immigration. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001.

"Immigrants, Puerto Ricans, and the Earnings of Native Black Males." Pp. 125-142 in Gerald D. Jaynes, ed., Immigration and Race: New Challenges for American Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

Book Reviews

Richard Alba and Victor Nee, "Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration," Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003, American Journal of Sociology, November 2004 (110:3), forthcoming.

Joel S. Fetzer, "Public Attitudes toward Immigration in the United States, France, and Germany," Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, Journal of American Ethnic History, Winter 2002, 21(2): 95-97.

Nancy Foner, Ruben G. Rumbaut, and Steven J. Gold, eds., "Immigration Research for a New Century: Multidisciplinary Perspectives," New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000, Population and Development Review, December 2001, 27(4): 807-809.

Joyce Tang, "Doing Engineering: The Career Attainment and Mobility of Caucasian, Black, and Asian-American Engineers," New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000, Social Forces, September 2001, 80(1): 370-371.