Definition of "pipeline"

The gym’s proprietor, “Crazy” Tim Credeur, heads up the Gladiator Academy, which serves as a pipeline for amateur MMA fighters to move up the ranks, though few of them do.

April 19 2002, Scott Tobias, AV Club Fightville

History education has also been considered as a pipeline that connects learners with 'their roots', thereby imbuing in them an awareness of their identity.

2012, Olivier Nyirubugara, Surfing the Past: Digital Learners in the History Class, page 257

A bracing Department of Justice lawsuit filed last month against Meridian, Miss[issippi] […] argues that the city’s juvenile justice system has operated a school to prison pipeline that shoves students out of school and into the criminal justice system […]

2012 November 26, Julianne Hing, “The Shocking Details of a Mississippi School-to-Prison Pipeline”, in Colorlines‎

Scottish rail suppliers have told the Government that they can only reach their target of employing 500 apprentices if they are given a clear pipeline of work, rather than having to endure the current stop-go programme.

2022 December 14, “Network News: A pipeline of work key for apprentices”, in RAIL, number 972, page 17

I recently had a peer reviewer demand that I refer to the so-called “Fortnite to alt-right pipeline” as though games automatically turn players into right-wing extremists.

2021, Marc A. Ouellette, Playing with the Gays: Masculinity and Relations in Video Games, page 214

Belew’s book offers a comprehensive history of the military-to-extremism pipeline in America since the Vietnam War, arguing that the ‘potent sense of betrayal’ felt by some white military personnel contributed to the rise of an over-trained and over-armed anti-government militia movement with a distinctly violent racist agenda.

2022, Simon A. Purdue, Race, Gender and Violence on the Transatlantic Extreme Right, 1969–2009, page 17

But increasingly, the reality TV-to-social-influencer pipeline has dried up. While the majority of contestants on reality TV dating shows like The Bachelor don’t come out meeting their forever love, they previously knew that if they resonated with viewers at home, they would be all but guaranteed hundreds of thousands, or millions of Instagram followers—and a lucrative career as an influencer.

2023 March 23, Mariah Espada, “Reality TV Fame Used to Guarantee a Career as an Instagram Influencer. That’s a Thing of the Past”, in Time