This is the first handbook to cover the sociological approaches to higher education. It is timely because of global expansions of mass higher educational systems, especially as these systems come under scrutiny by a variety of stakeholders. Questions are being raised about the value of traditional pedagogies along with calls for efficiency, accountability and cost-reduction, but above all job training. Within this neoliberal context, each chapter examines different sociological aspects of, and debates about, educational institutions as status-conferring organizations, with myriad positional characteristics, experiences, and outcomes. Many current debates concern the legitimacy of the statuses conferred, including the continuing debate regarding the role of universities in legitimating social class reproduction as well as more recent concerns about standards in mass systems. This handbook puts these issues and debates in focus in ways that will be of interest to a variety of stakeholders, within academia as well as in policy circles.About the Author: James E. Côté's educational research, focused on education-to-work transitions in the North American context, has culminated in two recent books on the sociology of higher education, Lowering Higher Education: The Rise of Corporate Universities and the Fall of Liberal Education (University of Toronto Press, 2011) and Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis (University of Toronto Press, 2007). Andy Furlong has written extensively on youth and young adulthood as well as on the sociology of higher education in the UK. He led three funded projects on socio-economic disadvantage and higher education, leading to several articles and a book, Social Justice and Higher Education (Open University Press, 2009).