What was working for them — and what wasn’t? Here is some of what we heard:
A sense of belonging depends on the space.
Focused first-gen programs and initiatives help, but they often don’t permeate campus culture, students said. Citing a new book, Geographies of Campus Inequality, which studies “where, with whom, how, and at what cost students integrate into campus,” Jack, once a first-gen student himself, asked the students where they felt seen, and where they felt invisible.
All three said they’ve felt at home in organizations tailored for them. But that sense of belonging doesn’t always extend to the classroom, for example, or the career center.
Bakhtawar Yasir, a senior at the University of North Texas, has felt comfortable in spaces like her campus’s First-Generation Success Center, where “they do help me a lot,” she said, “and I don’t feel like I’m being judged.” However, some moments with classmates in her political-science major have been more awkward — like feeling what she called “a big disconnect” in conversations about, for example, what students’ parents do for a living.
Daniela Ramirez, a student at Wake Technical Community College, in North Carolina, has generally found her campus very welcoming, but “even though the school is very diverse,” she said, “there are certain classes where it could be kind of odd to see somebody that’s first generation.”
At his career center, Austin Huff, a senior at the University of Kentucky, has heard questions like, “Don’t your parents have any connections that could get you a job?”
In contrast, he could be himself in his first-gen scholarship program. “Those are my people,” he said. “They don’t know how to fill out a FAFSA either, they don’t know how to fill out law-school applications. They’re just as confused as I am.” He found similar camaraderie his first year in a living-learning community for first-gen students, saying it was “just the most welcoming space. We all shared our struggles.”
Expectations weigh heavily on students.
With little context for what college achievement looks like, Yasir found it difficult at first to accept anything less than a 4.0 GPA. She has come to realize that success “means I’ve worked really hard, I actually learned” — including by talking to her professors and building connections.
She also puts pressure on herself about what she thinks others expect from her, and she isn’t alone in that. Ramirez described having to restructure her thinking to avoid concluding, “I’m disappointing not just myself, but my community, my country, Latinos in general.”
Even a fleeting personal connection can make a big difference.
A mentor can play a significant role in a student’s life, Jack said, but just a tiny moment can change someone’s trajectory, and turn “trials into triumphs.”
Yasir shared one such moment, when she pushed aside fears of being a burden on her professor and went to office hours for help. Her professor told her: “I just sit here waiting for students. I get paid to sit here for two or three hours. All I want is to talk to students and help them.” For Yasir, it was eye-opening: “I have never stopped asking questions since that conversation.”
Huff’s turning point came during a program in Washington, D.C., where he heard the Supreme Court associate justice Sonia Sotomayor speak about having been a first-gen student. “That was kind of a pivotal moment in my life where I was like, Oh my gosh, I can be literally anything.”
Outreach and representation really matter.
While faculty members are vital points of contact, staff members and administrators can seek out students, too. Ramirez described the president of Wake Tech walking around campus talking to students and asking them for input on what could be improved. “I have seen that he actually cares,” she said.
Students are eager to share their ideas for “fundamental change,” Yasir said, but they often don’t know how to go about that. She recommended that administrators open up conversations with students about how universities work. “Students don’t know where to start,” she said, but if professors and administrators “come to us, we will come running to them.”
The first-gen program staff members at Kentucky tend to have similar backgrounds to the students’, said Huff: “They’ve been through it.” Having first-gen members of the Board of Trustees, he said, would “really go a long way.”
The discussion was part of a yearlong program developed by The Chronicle, with support from the Ascendium Education Group, that explores common challenges and new approaches to student success through virtual forums, written reports, and an online resource center. The next event in this series will focus on first-generation men in the aftermath of the Covid crisis. —Maura Mahoney
Recommended reading.
Here are some education-related stories from other outlets that recently caught my eye. Did I miss a good one? Let me know.
- Increasingly dire warnings of teacher shortages in some parts of the country often fail to mention the folks most affected: Black and Latino educators and the students of color who rely on them. And as The Hechinger Report and Time magazine highlight in this piece, the pandemic has hastened the pace at which Black teachers are leaving the profession.
- Three years into a federal program aimed at rooting out spies in American businesses and laboratories who steal intellectual property for the Chinese government, an editorial in The Boston Globe argues that the lack of clarity or focus surrounding the “China Initiative” is “leaving researchers, academic institutions, and watchdogs confused over what the federal government is looking for or even trying to achieve.”
- A Pew Charitable Trusts survey of military veterans found that nearly 60 percent were borrowing money to cover living expenses while in college. As student-loan researchers write on Pew’s website, that finding lends support to reports that such expenses have become significant components of the cost of attendance, even for students receiving GI Bill benefits that provide both tuition and housing assistance.
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