Although most students graduate from high school and enroll in college the following fall, rates of entry into higher education and completion of a bachelor's degree continue to be stratified by race and class. Because of the potential returns that accrue to individuals and society overall when students complete their 4-year degree, these disparate trends should motivate more policy-relevant research in this area. In this review, I show how a longitudinal perspective of the path to a BA degree helps to reconcile competing theories of college completion by race and class across disciplinary boundaries. Both human capital theory and status attainment theory largely examine college completion as the long-term process of BA attainment, although they differ in their focal stages and mechanisms. In contrast, the theory of categorical inequality, as applied in this review, focuses on the years in higher education and describes the ways in which colleges and universities as organizations create, legitimate, and reinforce categorical distinctions in postsecondary schooling and how these processes independently shape college completion inequality. As public interest grows in holding colleges accountable for their graduation rates, more research is needed on how the formal and informal organizational policies and practices of colleges produce inequality.

Universities are increasingly using learning communities (LCs) to promote the academic and social integration of entering students, especially within STEM majors. Examining the causal effect of LCs on student networks is necessary to understand the nature and scope of their impact. This study combines a regression discontinuity design with social network analysis to estimate the effect of a simple LC design on the size, strength, structure, and composition of friendship networks among students within the same biological sciences freshman cohort. Results of the quasi-experimental analysis indicate that LC participants acquired one additional friend in the major and increased their share of friends in the LC by 54 percentage-points. Exponential random-graph models that test mediation and alternative friendship mechanisms provide support for the theoretical argument that the LC promoted friendship development by structuring opportunities for interaction through block-registration into courses. Thus, this study shows that even simple LCs can shape the development of friendships through relatively low-cost administrative means. The increased access to resources and support facilitated by the LC is likely beneficial for participating students. However, there is a potential downside when eligibility for participation is determined using academic metrics that separate the student population into distinct classroom environments.

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