A first generation student is a college student who is the first member of their family to enroll in education beyond high school. First generation students make up nearly one-third of undergraduates in the U.S. [1]
Low income, first generation students face well-documented barriers to higher education not seen by their more affluent peers whose parents attended college [2] . They derive disproportionately from ethnic and racial minority backgrounds with lower levels of academic preparation. Unlike peers from college-going communities, most first generation students do not receive guidance from their parents or guardians on preparing for, applying to, and paying for college because of a lack of "college knowledge" in the immediate family. [3]
The high schools that low-income, first generation students attend may be less equipped to offer effective guidance or rigorous course work and less likely to ensure that they enroll in high school courses that effectively prepare them for the post-secondary experience. If they are successful in applying for and being accepted into a two or four year institution, they may find that navigating college bureaucracy is both daunting and undermining to their success. [4]
First generation students are also likely to have work and family obligations outside college, limiting their participation in campus activities. More than a quarter of them leave college after their first year and only 11 percent graduate within six years. [5]
Arnold Mitchem, founding president of the Council for Opportunity in Education, established the term “first generation college student” in 1979 during the reauthorization of the 1965 Higher Education Act. Then, it specifically referred to student eligibility for federal TRIO “college access programs” that came from Lyndon Baines Johnson’s War on Poverty programs. These programs help prepare low-income, first generation and minority students for college and assist them with securing financial aid. “First generation” was incorporated in the H.R. 5192 Education Amendments of 1980. [6]
Since the inception of TRIO, the country’s oldest continually-operating college access programs, a multitude of public, private and public/private college access programs have launched in the U.S.
Famous first generation graduate successes abound. Just a few of a great many examples are First Lady of The United States Michelle Obama; Actress Viola Davis; Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor; Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz; US Secretary of State Colin Powell; and media proprietor Oprah Winfrey.
Notes
edit- ^ U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Postsecondary Student Aid Study. 2008. Data Analysis System.
- ^ Mortenson, Tom. "Postsecondary Education Opportunity," The Pell Institute for Higher Education. Summer/Fall 2015
- ^ Engle, Jennifer et al, "Straight from the Source: What Works for First Generation College Students," The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, 2006
- ^ Engle, Jennifer and Tinto, Vincent, "Moving Beyond Access," The Pell Institute for Opportunity in Higher Education.
- ^ Engle and Vincent
- ^ Moore, Gwen; "A Tribute to Dr. Arnold L. Mitchem"; Capitolwords, October 10, 2013.