"On the Edge of Commitment is a provocative assessment of how young people decide how far to go in school. Morgan advances a novel and technically sophisticated synthesis of socialization and rational choice perspectives on educational attainment, and sets out a promising agenda for the next generation of educational stratification research."--Robert D. Mare, University of California, Los Angeles "An understanding of processes of educational attainment is of ever-increasing importance in contemporary societies. Morgan's book presents a new approach, integrating the best of previous work with highly original ideas of his own, and admirably demonstrating how sociological imagination can be combined with theoretical rigor."--John Goldthorpe, Oxford University "The discipline has waited many decades for a mechanism-rich model of educational attainment that incorporates agency and beliefs in credible ways and thereby goes beyond the foundational work of the "basic" and Wisconsin models. With Steve Morgan's new book, On the Edge of Commitment, the long wait is now over. His model will be embraced by many, eschewed by some, and studied by all.

"--David B. Grusky, Stanford University.