Authors: Anna Stansbury and Kyra Rodriguez
Institution: Stone Center Working Paper Series no. 123
Date: February 2026
Abstract:
Unlike gender or race, class background is rarely a focus of research on career progression, or of DEI efforts in elite occupations. Should it be? In this paper we document a large class gap in career progression in one occupation—U.S. tenure-track academia—using parental education to proxy for class background. First-generation college graduates are 10% less likely to be tenured at an R1, are tenured at institutions ranked 11% lower, earn 3% less, and report 5% lower job satisfaction, than their former Ph.D. classmates (from the same institution and field) with a parent with a non-Ph.D. graduate degree. Neither selection out of academia nor different preferences explain this gap; differential research productivity also plays little role. Instead, likely drivers are differences in cultural and social capital. We also find a class gap in career progression for Ph.D.s who work in industry, suggesting this phenomenon generalizes outside academia.
