Thurston Domina Assistant Professor Department of Education email: tdomina@uci.edu phone: 949.824.6374 office: Berkeley Place 2082 http://www.gse.uci.edu/tdomina

Thurston Domina earned his PhD in Sociology from the City University of New York in 2006. He was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University’s Texas Higher Education Opportunity Project from 2006-2007.

Dr. Domina’s teaching and research focus on the role that educational policies play in producing and mitigating social inequalities. While his work has spanned K-16 education, Dr. Domina has dedicated particular attention to US higher education policy. His research has investigated the intergenerational consequences of college access programs, explored the ways in which higher education admissions and financial aid policies can operate as high school reform programs, and investigated the consequences that brain drain migration has had for American social and economic geography.


Selected Publications

Attewell, P. and Domina, T. (2008). Raising the Bar: Curricular Intensity and Academic Performance. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 30(1), 51-71.

Using national transcript data, Professors Attewell (City University of New York) and Domina examined inequality in access to an advanced curriculum in high school and assessed the consequences of curricular intensity on test scores and college entry. Inequalities in curricular intensity were primarily explained by student socioeconomic status effects that operated within schools rather than between schools. They found significant positive effects of taking a more intense curriculum on 12th-grade test scores and in probabilities of entry to and completion of college. However, the effect sizes of curricular intensity were generally modest,smaller than advocates of curricular upgrading policies have implied.

Thurston Domina. 2007. “Higher education policy as secondary school reform: Texas public high schools after Hopwood.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

Paul Attewell, David Lavin, Thurston Domina, and Tania Levey. 2007. Passing the Torch: Does Higher Education for the Disadvantaged Pay Off Across the Generations? New York: Russell Sage Foundation. American Sociological Association Rose Monographs Series.

Thurston Domina. 2006. “Brain Drain and Brain Gain: Rising Educational Segregation in the United States 1940-2000.” City & Community 5(4).

Thurston Domina. 2006. “What Clean Break? Nonmetropolitan Migration Patterns and the Continuing Relevance of Economics.” Rural Sociology 71(3).

Paul Attewell, David Lavin, Thurston Domina, and Tania Levey. 2006. “New Evidence on College Remediation.” Journal of Higher Education 77(5).

Thurston Domina. 2005. “Leveling the Home Advantage: Assessing the Effectiveness of Parental Involvement.” Sociology of Education 78(3).

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