This article employs Bourdieu's concept of capital to understand how state officials and teacher educators in New Jersey used three different forms of capital--economic, social, and cultural--in their struggle to shape the undergraduate teacher preparation and the first state sponsored alternative route program to teacher certification. Based on analysis of state archive documents and other primary sources, I describe how state officials successfully exploited their access to cultural and economic capital to establish a legitimate and credible educational policy and to marginalize teacher educators who were forced to rely, almost entirely, on their cultural capital. I conclude that as a result of this struggle, the field of educational policy in New Jersey during the 1980s experienced a shift of power, with the state gaining more power to implement its vision of educational policy (one that relied on neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideas and that supported teachers with broader subject matter knowledge and leaner pedagogic training). (Contains 21 notes.)