From pipelines to pathways in the study of academic progress.

Students and administrators can benefit from new analytics.

Classed Pathways to Marriage: Hometown Ties, College Networks, and Life after Graduation.

Objective: This article identifies mechanisms through which social class background shapes the marital outcomes of college-going white American women.

Background: Scholars are interested in the relative influences of ascriptive and achieved characteristics on mate selection. Research indicates that social class background continues to influence the marriage patterns of college-educated Americans but does not identify the mechanisms through which this occurs.

Parents, Partners, and Professions: Reproduction and Mobility in a Cohort of College Women.

This article draws on data from a twelve-year longitudinal qualitative interview study of forty-five white women who started college in 2004 at a public flagship university in the American Midwest. We compare the class position of women's parents (captured when women began college) to women's own adult class position at age 30. Despite substantial downward mobility and modest upward mobility, we find that white women's social class was relatively sticky; that is, even downwardly mobile white women from privileged families did not fall far, while upwardly mobile white women from less privileged families were blocked from the top of the class structure.