Postdoctoral Scholar
School of Education
250 Public Services Building, Room 262
Biography
Oded Mcdossi is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Irvine, working on the UCI Measuring Undergraduate Success Trajectories project (UCI-MUST). Oded is a sociologist of stratification, inequality, and institutions, whose current work centers on educational disadvantage, mobility, and integration with a particular focus on the wellbeing, higher-education experiences, curricular choices, and decision-making of first-generation college students.
Oded holds a Ph.D. from the School of Education at Tel Aviv University. In 2020, he was a post-doctoral fellowship funded by the Israeli Science Foundation at the Department of Sociology at The Ohio State University. In 2021, Oded was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University.
Oded’s doctoral dissertation considered whether, and if so why, socially advantaged students are more likely to make interdisciplinary choices in their selected fields of study, especially choices incorporating the risk inherent in crossing conventional boundaries between disciplines. The research used a multi-method research design with a quantitative analysis of restricted-use longitudinal data and in-depth interviews with students, spanning and crossing disciplinary boundaries. These research findings have been published in Higher Education and Higher Education Research & Development journals. In the context of his post-doctoral position at OSU, he examined whether, and if so how and why, first-generation students differ from their continuing generation student peers in integrating on campus (defined by participation in campus activities) and the role of institutional arrangements in shaping integrational inequalities. Some of the research findings were published in Social Science Research. Before moving to Irvine he worked on several related projects examining the ways in which the expansion of the Israeli postsecondary system reshaped the contours of Israel’s stratification system and whether privileged populations adapted to the new structure of the postsecondary system and maintained their superior position in the socioeconomic hierarchy. Using restricted-use data and advanced statistical methods he examined how institutional type and college major inflate income inequalities in the labor market following a reform aimed at increasing educational equality.
In the MUST project, Oded is working on several related projects exploring how course-taking patterns are varied by students’ social background and the consequences of curricular choices on persistence and success in college.
Selected publications
Mcdossi, Oded. 2022. “Inequality Reproduction, Higher Education and The Double Major Choice in College.” Higher Education.
Mcdossi, Oded, Ashley Wright, Anne McDaniel, and Vincent Roscigno. 2022. “First-Generation Inequality and College Integration.” Social Science Research.
Mcdossi, Oded. 2021.“Epistemological Similarities, Prestige Hierarchies, and Double Major Combinations.” Higher Education Research & Development.
Ayalon, Hanna, Oded Mcdossi and Abraham Yogev. 2021. “Institutional Differentiation and Field of Study Stratification in Expanded Higher Education: The Case of Israel.” Higher Education Policy.
Yariv Feniger, Oded Mcdossi and Hanna Ayalon. 2021. “College Gender Composition and Bachelor’s Degree Completion: The Disadvantage of Enrolment in a Male-Dominated Institution.” Journal of Gender Studies.