Rate My Professor Michael Sauder

Michael Sauder is Chair and Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Iowa. He earned a BA from Iowa State University and a PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University. Sauder's research specializes in the sociology of organizations, sociological theory, culture, and inequality. His work examines how social structures and processes, such as quantification, rankings, and chance events, shape individual behaviors and institutional dynamics. He conducted some of the first empirical studies on the effects of college and law school rankings, revealing their unintended consequences on reactivity and accountability in higher education. This research has been widely cited, including in discussions surrounding top law schools' decisions to withdraw from U.S. News & World Report rankings. More recently, Sauder has investigated the role of luck in social mobility and life trajectories, advocating for greater attention to randomness in sociological analysis.

Sauder co-authored the influential book Engines of Anxiety: Academic Rankings, Reputation, and Accountability (Russell Sage Foundation, 2016) with Wendy Nelson Espeland, which won the Midwest Sociological Society's 2018 Distinguished Book Award. Other key publications include 'Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds' (American Journal of Sociology, 2007, with Wendy Nelson Espeland), 'A Sociology of Luck' (Sociological Theory, 2020), and 'Status: Insights from Organizational Sociology' (Annual Review of Sociology, 2012). He received the 2009 Sociology of Culture Section Award from the American Sociological Association for his paper with Espeland, as well as awards from the Midwest Sociological Society and the ASA's Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section. Sauder has served on editorial boards and proposed editing Contemporary Sociology. He holds a fellowship at the Max-Weber-Kolleg in Erfurt, Germany, and contributes to departmental leadership as Chair. His scholarship bridges sociology of education, organizations, and culture, influencing debates on metrics, status, and inequality across disciplines.