In a 2025 study published in Social Forces, Michelle Jackson and former Stanford PhD student Christof Brandtner examine how the language colleges use to describe themselves generates inequality in higher education. They introduce the concept of “institutional exclusion” to capture how official narratives—mission statements, recruitment materials, and public messaging—shape who feels that college is “for them.”

Using computational text analysis, the paper compares the narratives of community colleges, for-profit colleges, and four-year universities. The findings reveal a striking divide: for-profit institutions emphasize career readiness and practical outcomes, while four-year universities  employ aspirational, post-materialist rhetoric about personal growth and prestige.

To test the impact of this messaging, Jackson and Brandtner run a survey experiment with high school seniors. The results show that disadvantaged students gravitate toward pragmatic, career-focused narratives, while advantaged students respond more positively to idealistic, transformation-oriented messages.

The study highlights how inequality in higher education is produced not just through financial and academic barriers, but also through the cultural signals colleges project—signals that can deter or attract students long before they apply.