Allison Hurst

Professor of Sociology

"The Graduate School Pipeline and First-Generation/Working-Class Inequalities"


Journal article


Allison L. Hurst, Vincent Roscigno, Anthony Abraham Jack, et al.,
Sociology of Education, vol. 97(2), 2024, pp. 148-173


Cite

Cite

APA   Click to copy
"The Graduate School Pipeline and First-Generation/Working-Class Inequalities" (2024). Sociology of Education, 97(2), 148–173. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407231215051


Chicago/Turabian   Click to copy
“&Quot;The Graduate School Pipeline and First-Generation/Working-Class Inequalities&Quot;” Sociology of Education 97, no. 2 (2024): 148–173.


MLA   Click to copy
“&Quot;The Graduate School Pipeline and First-Generation/Working-Class Inequalities&Quot;” Sociology of Education, vol. 97, no. 2, 2024, pp. 148–73, doi:10.1177/00380407231215051.


BibTeX   Click to copy

@article{hurst2024a,
  title = {"The Graduate School Pipeline and First-Generation/Working-Class Inequalities"},
  year = {2024},
  issue = {2},
  journal = {Sociology of Education},
  pages = {148-173},
  volume = {97},
  doi = {10.1177/00380407231215051},
  author = {}
}

 Sociological research has long been interested in inequalities generated by and within educational institutions. Although relatively rich as a literature, less analytic focus has centered on educational mobility and inequality experiences within graduate training specifically. In this article, we draw on a combination of survey and open-ended qualitative data from approximately 450 graduate students in the discipline of sociology to analyze graduate school pipeline divergences for first-generation and working-class students and the implications for inequalities in tangible resources, advising and support, and a sense of isolation. Our results point to an important connection between private undergraduate institutional enrollment and higher-status graduate program attendance—a pattern that undercuts social-class mobility in graduate training and creates notable precarities in debt, advising, and sense of belonging for first-generation and working-class graduate students. We conclude by discussing the unequal pathways revealed and their implications for merit and mobility, graduate training, and opportunity within our and other disciplines.