ABSTRACT
Exclusion and stratification have taken many forms over the centuries of colonial and then US higher education. As noted, even in their earliest years, colonial colleges enrolled scholarship boys, the serious boys, often from poor backgrounds, often intent on becoming ministers. Frighteningly, one minoritized population, American Indians, that was enrolled at some of those colonial colleges by and large had harsh experiences. The advent of institutions of higher education for white women and African Americans more fundamentally signaled the beginning of exclusion by institution type, a very different type of shift. A richer understanding of the shifts in exclusion at the time obtains in considering gender. Institutional stratification by selectivity, however, appeared to matter more in terms of career outcomes than the gendered nature of the college experience. Furthermore, the most prestigious colleges and universities offer a liberal arts education with little if any offerings in utilitarian areas such as education, business, or social work.
