Dougherty, Kevin J. (kd109)

• B.A., Washington University, Political Science.
• M.A., Ph.D. Harvard University, Sociology.

Higher education policy and reform. The community college. College students. Sociology of education. Political sociology. Economic sociology.

Prof. Dougherty's current research is focused on two main topics: (1) class and race inequalties in information about higher education and the role of those inequalities in the production and legitimation of class and race gaps in college access and success; (2) post-Lukesian theories of political power integrating insights from post-structuralist theory and the sociology of culture. In the past, Professor Dougherty has done extensive research and writing on neoliberalism and higher education policymaking; the origins and impacts of state performance funding programs; state policies affecting access to, and success in, community colleges by low-income students and students of color; policies affecting immigrant student access to higher education; the historical origins and educational impacts on students of community colleges; the role of higher education in economic and workforce development; and industrial policy and state programs for science and technology-based economic development.

• Choice Is Not Always Good: Reducing the Role of Informational Inequality in Producing and Legitimating Higher Education Inequality. New York: Community College Research Center, Teachers College, March 2023. Available from:https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/publications/choice-is-not-always-good.html.
• Analyzing Neoliberalism in Theory and Practice: The Case of Performance-Based Funding for Higher Education (with Rebecca S. Natow). Working Paper #43.  London, UK: UCL Institute of Education, Centre for Global Higher Education, March 2019. Available from: https://www.researchcghe.org/publications/working-paper/analysing-neoliberalism-in-theory-and-practice-the-case-of-performance-based-funding-for-higher-education.
• S. Industrial Policies, Left and Right: Convergence, Divergence, and Political Implications (with Tara Habibi). New York, NY: Teachers College, April 2021. Available from: https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/d8-1449-9k03.
• “Student Choice in Higher Education—Reducing or Reproducing Social Inequalities?” (with Claire Callender). Social Sciences (Basel), 7 (10) (2018), 1-28. Available from: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/7/10/189.
• Reforming the American Community College: Promising Prospects and their Challenges (with Hana Lahr and Vanessa S. Morest).  New York, NY: Teachers College, Community College Research Center, November 2017. Available from: https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/publications/reforming-american-community-college-promising-changes-challenges.html.
• Performance Funding for Higher Education (with Sosanya Jones, Hana Lahr, Rebecca S. Natow, Lara Pheatt, & Vikash Reddy), Johns Hopkins University Press, October 2016.
• The Politics of Performance Funding for Higher Education: Origins, Discontinuations, and Transformations (with Rebecca S. Natow), Johns Hopkins University Press, May 2015.
• “Looking Inside the Black Box of Performance Funding for Higher Education:  Policy Instruments, Outcomes, Obstacles, and Unintended Impacts.” (with Sosanya Jones, Hana Lahr, Rebecca S. Natow, Lara Pheatt, & Vikash Reddy). Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2(1) (2016). https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/2/1/147.
• Performance Funding for Higher Education: What Are the Mechanisms? What Are the Impacts? (with Vikash Reddy). ASHE Higher Education Report: Vol. 39, Number 2 (June 2013), pp. 1-133.
• “Undocumented Immigrants and State Higher Education Policy: The Contrasting Politics of In-State Tuition Eligibility in Texas and Arizona.” (with H. Kenny Nienhusser and Blanca E. Vega). Review of Higher Education 34 (1) (Fall 2010), pp. 123-173. 
• “It’s Not Enough to Get Through the Open Door: Inequalities by Social Background in Transfer from Community Colleges to Four-Year Colleges.” (with Greg Kienzl). Teachers College Record 108 (March 2006): 452-487.
• “Community Colleges and Contract Training: Content, Origins, and Impacts. (with Marianne Bakia). Teachers College Record 102 (1) (Feb. 2000): 197-243.
• "Opportunity to Learn Standards: A Sociological Critique." Sociology of Education 68 (May 1996): 40-65.
• The Contradictory College: The Conflicting Origins, Impacts, and Futures of the Community College. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994.  Winner of the Willard Waller Award for the Outstanding Book in the Sociology of Education in the years 1994-1996.