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• B.A., Washington University, Political Science.
• M.A., Ph.D. Harvard University, Sociology.

Higher education policy and reform. Sociology of education. Political sociology. Economic sociology.

Prof. Dougherty's current research is focused on two main topics: (1) post-Lukesian theories of political power, integrating insights from the sociology of culture and the sociology, psychology, and politics of emotions; (2) class and race inequalities in information about higher education and the role of those inequalities in the production and legitimation of class and race gaps in college access and success. In the past, Professor Dougherty has done extensive research and writing on neoliberalism and higher education policymaking; the origins and impacts of state performance funding programs; state policies affecting access to, and success in, community colleges by low-income students and students of color; policies affecting immigrant student access to higher education; the historical origins and educational impacts on students of community colleges; the role of higher education in economic and workforce development; and industrial policy and state programs for science and technology-based economic development.

• Emotional Politics in the Age of Trumpism: Analyzing the Emotional Discourses of Trumpist and Anti-Trumpist Political Leaaders. Available from ResearchGate:  Paper now under journal review. 
• "Choice, Information Inequity, and the Production, Legitimation, and Reduction of Educational Inequality.” ³ÉÈ˶¶Òõ Record 126(2), (2024), 70-119.
• “Comparing and Learning from English and American Higher Education Access and Completion Policies” (with Claire Callender). Policy Reviews in Higher Education 4(2) (2020), 203-227.
• "Performance-Based Funding for Higher Education: How Well Does Neoliberal Theory Capture Neoliberal Practice?” (with Rebecca Natow). Higher Education 80 (2020), pp. 457-478.   
• U.S. Industrial Policies, Left and Right: Convergence, Divergence, and Political Implications (with Tara Habibi). New York, NY: ³ÉÈ˶¶Òõ, April 2021. Available from: .
• “Student Choice in Higher Education—Reducing or Reproducing Social Inequalities?” (with Claire Callender). Social Sciences (Basel), 7 (10) (2018), 1-28. Available from: .
• Reforming the American Community College: Promising Prospects and their Challenges (with Hana Lahr and Vanessa S. Morest).  New York, NY: ³ÉÈ˶¶Òõ, Community College Research Center, November 2017. Available from: .
• Performance Funding for Higher Education (with Sosanya Jones, Hana Lahr, Rebecca S. Natow, Lara Pheatt, & Vikash Reddy), Johns Hopkins University Press, October 2016.
• The Politics of Performance Funding for Higher Education: Origins, Discontinuations, and Transformations (with Rebecca S. Natow), Johns Hopkins University Press, May 2015.
• “Looking Inside the Black Box of Performance Funding for Higher Education:  Policy Instruments, Outcomes, Obstacles, and Unintended Impacts.” (with Sosanya Jones, Hana Lahr, Rebecca S. Natow, Lara Pheatt, & Vikash Reddy). Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2(1) (2016). .
• "Undocumented Immigrants and State Higher Education Policy: The Contrasting Politics of In-State Tuition Eligibility in Texas and Arizona.” (with H. Kenny Nienhusser and Blanca E. Vega). Review of Higher Education 34 (1) (Fall 2010), pp. 123-173. 
• “It’s Not Enough to Get Through the Open Door: Inequalities by Social Background in Transfer from Community Colleges to Four-Year Colleges.” (with Greg Kienzl). ³ÉÈ˶¶Òõ Record 108 (March 2006): 452-487.
• The Contradictory College: The Conflicting Origins, Impacts, and Futures of the Community College. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994.  Winner of the Willard Waller Award for the Outstanding Book in the Sociology of Education in the years 1994-1996.