How to Help First Gen Students is Not So Simple
A recent piece in the New York Times suggests that we have a problem getting first generation college students to progress through college. True enough. No shock there. It is data supported. Just look at retention and graduation rates.
The article then proceeds to note the progress being made to facilitate student success including nudges and augmented advising. The piece also lauds the new Pell-plus opportunity for students to get more money if they progress faster through college by carrying 15 rather than 12 credits.
Stated most simply, this piece greatly oversimplifies, and that is risky. Start with the Pell issue: First generation students are not necessarily benefited by taking 15 credits and why should they lose out if they take 12 credits? Speed of graduation isn't the goal here; graduation is. Sometimes the proverbial light bulb goes off at different times. In an effort to save money, the Pell "improvement" leads to bad incentives in the real world.
Next, nudges and added advising as part of an overall strategy are valuable but alone, they are not a strategy. They are pieces of a bigger puzzle. And in the article, this items are viewed as parent-substitutes. I appreciate that first gen parents are not savvy like the parents of many students at elite prep schools. But, instead of noting these parents' lack of participation, why not find ways to engage them meaningfully? We can help the parents help their kids -- wouldn't that be wiser?
And, this NYTimes piece misses for me the overarching question: don't institutions need to self-reflect to ask what they can do better across the spectrum to meet the needs of the students they have? Instead of trying to remediate the individual students, might we not want to ask what institutions and those within them can do better to enable first generation students (the students of the 21st century) to succeed. These reflections would lead to systematic and systemic change. This means across all parts of the institution changes would be engendered.
Bottom line: nudges and intrusive advising and mentoring help. But they are not enough. To get at what is needed, we can't have one intervention here and one there. We need something that is deeply integrative and pervasive and reflective of institutional change. Now that's the challenge and that isn't met through some set of opportunities and a rush to finish for more money.
Oversimplification is an problematic as unnecessary complexity; neither work to address the problems which, to add to the issue, run across the educational pipeline and the starting point should not be college. Goodness knows, that is too little too late. We need to move back through the educational pipeline. So, let's expand how we think and avoid bandaids please. Let's really wrestle with the deeper issues that start early -- in infancy.
Let's not pretend that we can fix the experience of first generation students so facilely. Let's work to build on what we know.....the Times piece is only a start and hardly a finish. That's worth remembering.
Retired - Director, University Planning and Assessment and Lecturer at Texas State University
8 年The need to "fix" those things that are supposedly lacking for first generation students is truly based on a deficit thinking model, and therein lies the problem. The mentality of beginning the higher education process at a disadvantage and never losing the feeling of being a step behind everyone else is the problem! Lumping all first gen students into one group that is uninformed and unexposed and then identifying piecemeal solutions will never amount to true accomplishment or success! We, as educators, need to think outside the box and identify potential success solutions that will benefit all of our students and not continue to separate and single out first generation or minority students.
Purchaser/Supply Chain Analyst at Loblaws group of companies limited
8 年I agree with Charlotte klaar finding the existing level of knowledge of students is the key to efficient learning
Director of Klaar College Consulting
8 年I was a first generation student and have never lost the feeling of being a step behind everyone else. We need to engage these kids where they are and not assume that they are familiar with things they may never have heard of. The institutions need to recognize that not all families spend the summer on the Vineyard and that many kids have to work to pay for their clothes and books.