Various commissions and reports have called on colleges and universities to better prepare students for participation in a democratic society. A limit of such reports is that they often fail to consider how students might be categorized relative to their shared patterns of civic behaviors. Relying on alumni survey data from American College Testing (ACT), we employ latent class analysis (LCA) and identify four classes of college students that vary in their preferences for certain types of civic and noncivic activity. Implications for future research and the development of civic learning programs are discussed.

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In the last few decades, many developing countries have dramatically expanded the number of government-sponsored fellowships for graduate studies abroad to increase their participation in the knowledge economy. To award these grants, these programs have typically relied on international university rankings as their main selection criterion. Existing studies suggest these fellowships have been disproportionally awarded to applicants from privileged social backgrounds, thus intensifying existing national educational inequalities. However, this evidence is mostly anecdotal and descriptive in nature. In this article, we focus on a Chilean fellowship program, an iconic example of these policies. Using a causal path analysis mediation model and relying on social reproduction and stratification theories, we investigated whether the distribution of fellowships varied across applicants from different socioeconomic backgrounds and how university rankings affect applicants’ chances of obtaining the fellowship. Our findings revealed that, in a context of high social inequalities and a stratified education system, using international rankings as an awarding criterion reinforced the position of privilege of individuals who accrued educational advantages in high school, as well as the disadvantages of those less fortunate who faced fewer prior educational opportunities.

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Gender gaps in math achievement still persist in many countries and across educational levels. Chile is one of the OECD countries in which females are farthest behind their male counterparts in math achievement. The purpose of this study was to track gender scoring gaps among Chilean students from elementary to high school using latent growth modeling. The findings show that gender differences emerge during pre-school years and it widens as students progress through school. Also, gaps significantly increased when controlling for reading and academic ability. The gender gap is sizeable by the end of high school and thus it has important implications for access to higher education, which may later lead to occupational gender segregation and gender income disparities.