Richard Arum - Professor of Sociology and Education, UC Irvine
Richard Arum is Professor of Sociology and Education at the University of California, Irvine, where he directs the UCI Measuring Undergraduate Success Trajectories (MUST) Project. His research examines the sociology of education, higher education learning outcomes, educational inequality, school discipline, student development, and college-to-career transitions. He is coauthor of Academically Adrift and Aspiring Adults Adrift. His research works to understand how educational institutions shape learning, equity, and life-course outcomes.
Research Focus
At UCI, Arum directs the Measuring Undergraduate Success Trajectories Project, a longitudinal research initiative designed to better understand undergraduate learning, engagement, and development. The project integrates administrative records, student surveys, learning-management-system data, performance assessments, and student experience measures to examine how college shapes academic growth, belonging, well-being, and post-graduation outcomes.
His current research also includes studies of college-to-career pathways, including internships, co-ops, employer partnerships, career services, job application behavior, and the organizational conditions that help students translate undergraduate education into meaningful employment. This work focuses on how experiential workplace learning, extra-curricular participation and other educational and career preparation student engagement can improve opportunity while also attending to equity, access, and variation across institutions and fields of study.
A related strand of his work examines intellectual virtues and holistic student development in higher education. This research considers how colleges can cultivate curiosity, humility, integrity, tenacity, and other intellectual dispositions that support learning, adaptability, civic responsibility, and lifelong flourishing.
Books and Publications
Arum is coauthor, with Josipa Roksa, of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses and Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative Transitions of College Graduates. These books examine undergraduate learning, academic engagement, and the transition from college to adult life. His earlier work includes research on school discipline, student rights, social inequality, and the institutional organization of education.
His publications span sociology, education, law and society, higher education policy, and public-facing research. A full list of selected articles, reports, and working papers is available on the Publications page.
Selected Research Areas
Higher Education Learning Outcomes
Assessment of undergraduate learning, critical thinking, written communication, academic engagement, and institutional quality.
College-to-Career Transitions
Research on internships, co-ops, career services, employer partnerships, labor-market outcomes, and social mobility.
Educational Inequality and Stratification
Studies of how institutional contexts, family background, race, class, and school organization shape educational opportunity.
Student Well-Being and Campus Climate
Research on undergraduate experience, belonging, mental health, discrimination, and institutional supports for student success.
School Discipline, Law, and Authority
Research on student rights, legal mobilization, discipline, classroom order, and the organization of K–12 schooling.
Intellectual Virtues and Holistic Development
Work on curiosity, humility, integrity, tenacity, civic development, and broader purposes of liberal education.