Locating space and place in the college access debate: New tools for mapping and understanding educational inequity and stratification

Research on access to higher education has traditionally focused on vertical stratification, or the ways in which access is differentiated between social strata. This article introduces the role of horizontal space into the college-access discussion. Geographical information systems and geospatial data are used as analytic tools to map the distribution of residential demographics and social resources that are known to effect college access. Using the example of a single metropolitan region, we find evidence to suggest that segregation and the uneven distribution of social resources across space should be considered in college access research as well as social stratification.