ABSTRACT
Community colleges are open access post-secondary institutions that serve a variety of needs for diverse student populations. Community colleges are also often less resourced than four-year colleges, and the students who attend community colleges are more likely to be minoritized, from lower socioeconomic situations, and be less academically prepared when compared to four-year college going peers. Understanding the experiences of community college students and how they intersect with persistence is an important topic. Scholars are interested in persistence for higher education broadly, while community college practitioners and leaders look to improve student successes at specific institutions. To help bring forth the lived experiences of community college students, this phenomenologically-rooted qualitative study draws on the interviews of twelve first-time community college students who decided to stay enrolled at one urban community college from their first to second academic years. The theoretic approach was initially influenced by Interactionist theory and Involvement theory, and was ultimately shaped by Validation theory. Thematic analysis revealed that participants spoke to positive persistence experiences in which they felt validated or fortified, articulated positive possible selves, expressed evident self-efficacy, used reciprocal institutional resources, and placed value on individual cost-reducing initiatives. Although the participants attended during a unique-time due to the covid-19 pandemic, their experiences exemplify the significant role community college staff, faculty, and leaders play in supporting individual student's persistence. Future research ideas were explored, and recommendations for practitioners and leaders alike were offered. Foremost, the study highlights the pivotal role institutional agents play in the persistence experiences of community college students. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
As the share of young adults enrolled in four-year colleges has increased, first-generation college students have become a population of particular interest. First-generation college students, those whose parents have not attained a bachelor's degree, experience unique challenges and rewards throughout their journeys in higher education. Research on college students and their families has primarily focused on how families contribute to the reproduction of advantage or disadvantage, but recent work on first-generation college students has shifted the lens of analysis by re-centering the experiences of first-gen students and their families from their own perspectives. Drawing on longitudinal interviews with first-generation college students at a large land-grant institution in the Midwestern United States, this dissertation contributes to this literature by exploring how these relationships change throughout college, how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted first-gens' relationships with their families, and what the parent-child tie is expected to look like in the future.First, I examine how first-generation college students' relationships with their parents change over the first year of college, using interviews with 52 first-gen students and a small comparison group of 10 continuing-gen students. To my knowledge, this is the first study on college students' perceptions of the changing parent-child relationship that focuses specifically on first-generation college students. Contrary to previous research that concludes that parent-child relationships tend to remain stable or to improve throughout the college years, I find that there is much more variation in the perception of the relationship evolution for first-gen students, and identify four overarching categories of perceptions of change in the parent-child tie: positive, negative, changed but neutral, and no change. Second, employing the framework of habitus - tendencies toward thinking, acting, and feeling - I explore the narratives of three first-gen college students who were forced to reckon with their new habituses they've developed throughout college in the context of where their old habituses were formed, when the COVID-19 pandemic reached the U.S. in March of 2020 and they were sent home from campus to live with their parents. These students experience a cleft habitus - feeling split between an old habitus and new habitus as a result of upward social mobility - and this distress was heightened and exaggerated by the suddenness of the onset of the pandemic and consequent move back home. Third, I explore how first-gen college students foresee their relationships with their parents in the future (n=39), with a particular focus on tensions these students expect to arise given their expectedly more advantaged futures. For students who anticipate tension with their parents over their upward mobility, three overarching themes emerge: (1) jealousy and resentment;(2) changing worldviews;and (3) parents lack understanding. Employing the framework of the conflict-solidarity-ambivalence model, I conclude that the expectation for conflict must be undergirded by some form of intergenerational solidarity, given that these students expect to continue their relationships with their parents despite predicted conflict - indicating expected ambivalent intergenerational ties.Taken together, these findings contribute to our understanding of the complicated role of parents and family in first-generation college students' lives. By focusing on students' perceptions of their relationships with their parents, I illustrate the importance of students' narratives to their development as emerging adults. The research in this dissertation has implications for family sociology, higher education research, and university policies more broadly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
As the share of young adults enrolled in four-year colleges has increased, first-generation college students have become a population of particular interest. First-generation college students, those whose parents have not attained a bachelor's degree, experience unique challenges and rewards throughout their journeys in higher education. Research on college students and their families has primarily focused on how families contribute to the reproduction of advantage or disadvantage, but recent work on first-generation college students has shifted the lens of analysis by re-centering the experiences of first-gen students and their families from their own perspectives. Drawing on longitudinal interviews with first-generation college students at a large land-grant institution in the Midwestern United States, this dissertation contributes to this literature by exploring how these relationships change throughout college, how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted first-gens' relationships with their families, and what the parent-child tie is expected to look like in the future.First, I examine how first-generation college students' relationships with their parents change over the first year of college, using interviews with 52 first-gen students and a small comparison group of 10 continuing-gen students. To my knowledge, this is the first study on college students' perceptions of the changing parent-child relationship that focuses specifically on first-generation college students. Contrary to previous research that concludes that parent-child relationships tend to remain stable or to improve throughout the college years, I find that there is much more variation in the perception of the relationship evolution for first-gen students, and identify four overarching categories of perceptions of change in the parent-child tie: positive, negative, changed but neutral, and no change. Second, employing the framework of habitus - tendencies toward thinking, acting, and feeling - I explore the narratives of three first-gen college students who were forced to reckon with their new habituses they've developed throughout college in the context of where their old habituses were formed, when the COVID-19 pandemic reached the U.S. in March of 2020 and they were sent home from campus to live with their parents. These students experience a cleft habitus - feeling split between an old habitus and new habitus as a result of upward social mobility - and this distress was heightened and exaggerated by the suddenness of the onset of the pandemic and consequent move back home. Third, I explore how first-gen college students foresee their relationships with their parents in the future (n=39), with a particular focus on tensions these students expect to arise given their expectedly more advantaged futures. For students who anticipate tension with their parents over their upward mobility, three overarching themes emerge: (1) jealousy and resentment;(2) changing worldviews;and (3) parents lack understanding. Employing the framework of the conflict-solidarity-ambivalence model, I conclude that the expectation for conflict must be undergirded by some form of intergenerational solidarity, given that these students expect to continue their relationships with their parents despite predicted conflict - indicating expected ambivalent intergenerational ties.Taken together, these findings contribute to our understanding of the complicated role of parents and family in first-generation college students' lives. By focusing on students' perceptions of their relationships with their parents, I illustrate the importance of students' narratives to their development as emerging adults. The research in this dissertation has implications for family sociology, higher education research, and university policies more broadly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
The transition to college, combined with abrupt changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic and online learning, has increased challenges for first-year college students. Resilience theory, defined as the study of how people rebound from adversity, can help us understand how students triumph over challenges during an unprecedented time of change and uncertainty. Through narrative interview techniques and analysis of campus survey data, this qualitative study examines the meanings and experiences of academic resilience among seven first-generation Latina/o students in their first semester at University of California, Merced. Five female and two male participants were interviewed at the mid-point and at the end of their first semester of college. Connection to their environment, not fearing failure, agency, self-efficacy, and survival captured participants' meanings associated with resilience. The themes of connecting, helping, and storytelling summarize how students make meaning and experience academic resilience, engage in protective processes, and navigate mid-semester adversities and interventions. They also communicate the dynamic, situational, and process orientation of academic resilience. How students positively adapt to academic difficulty as they begin their college career provides a rich understanding of resilience. These understandings can be used to structure systems and processes that activate academic resilience habits early in a student's college experience. Building a strengths-based curriculum featuring first-year success courses, living learning communities, job and internship opportunities, and reflective experiences are key recommendations for policy and practice resulting from this study. This author posits reciprocal resilience as a systems-based model where members both contribute to and benefit from the collective persistence of their community. Future research on the responding and harmonizing actions between connecting, helping, and storytelling themes can enhance the understandings of reciprocating relationships that activate resilience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)