In popular imagination, higher education is an engine of social mobility that propels low-income students into middle-class careers. Certainly, there is historical evidence that completing a bachelor’s degree has a positive relationship to economic outcomes. First-generation college students, those whose parents did not attend postsecondary education, may also benefit from access to social capital and networks that open doors to professional careers or graduate education. But higher education also acts as a machine of social reproduction that concentrates wealth and advantage for some students and causes harm to low-income and first-generation students who leave college with no degree, student debt, and the feeling that they in the end weren’t “college material.”
According to the Center for First-Generation Student Success, as of 2015–2016, 56 percent of all undergraduates were first-generation (neither parent held a bachelor’s degree). Not all first-generation students are also low-income, and not all low-income students are first-generation; about half of first-generation students are also from low-income families. The substantial overlap of those categories means that there is a sizable body of low-income, first-generation (LIFG) college students in public, private nonprofit, and private for-profit colleges and universities. Importantly, gender and race interact with college-going behaviors of low-income youth whose parents did not attend college, resulting in overrepresentation of women of color among those LIFG students who do go to college.
There are high-profile efforts at some of the wealthiest private universities to offer no-loan full financial aid to low-income students, and a number of public universities have joined this approach to meet students’ full financial need without requiring them to take out student loans. The majority of LIFG college students, however, are at institutions that cannot afford or do not prioritize these kinds of programs. Most LIFG students receive institutional, state, or federal aid; work; take out student loans; borrow from friends or family; rely on high-interest credit cards; or some combination of these options to pay for tuition, fees, and living expenses. The HOPE Center for College, Community, and Justice at Temple University coined the term #RealCollege to draw attention to realities of students’ basic needs, including food and housing insecurity, transportation, technology, family care, and health care. The #RealCollege agenda points out inequities in the postsecondary sector, where elite private universities like Harvard University and Yale University garner headlines for no-loan aid packages to a relatively small number of students while students at under-resourced urban and regional public two-year and four-year institutions struggle to meet minimum financial needs.
For reasons including those related to assisting students meet their basic needs, colleges and universities have not been able to reach equity in LIFG persistence and graduation rates compared to their higher income peers, especially those whose parents attended college. The First Generation Foundation reported that only 11 percent of low-income, first-generation students—compared to 55 percent of continuing-generation students—had earned a bachelor’s degree within six years of enrolling. While individuals who have some college but no degree tend to have higher earnings than those who never start college, LIFG students who do not complete college are likely to have incurred student debt, eroding the financial advantages of earning some college credits.
Social Mobility
LIFG students who do graduate are likely to experience social and economic mobility. The extent of this mobility depends on both the institution attended and some demographic differences among LIFG students. On the institutional side, economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues used data from 30 million college students from 1999–2013 to create “mobility report cards” for thousands of two-year and four-year institutions. They calculated a mobility rate for each institution by multiplying two factors: (1) access, represented by the percent of students from the lowest fifth of the parent-income distribution and (2) success, represented by the percent of students from the lowest fifth who end up with earnings in the top fifth. So, an elite institution with very few students from the lowest fifth may propel nearly all of them to the top fifth, but a more broadly accessible institution with a lower rate of propelling students to the highest quintile might still have a higher mobility rate because it has higher proportion of students from the lowest income quintile. Indeed, the highest mobility rates Chetty and colleagues found were most often at less selective public institutions with lots of low-income students and very good outcomes for graduates. What institution a LIFG student attends matters.
But there is more to social mobility than choosing an institution likely to lead to positive economic outcomes. Completing the college degree itself is a substantial factor in social mobility for LIFG students; a student who completes a degree at an institution with a lower mobility index may be better off than one who drops out of a higher mobility index institution. Other characteristics being equal, first-generation students are more likely than peers to pursue majors like education, engineering, health, and social work that have clear pathways to professions with relatively low unemployment. Other within-college decisions can affect social mobility, including decisions to participate in community-engaged or service learning, career internships, and career-related student employment. Taking up these opportunities along the way can lead to accumulation of knowledge, skills, and networks that promote social mobility after college.
Social Reproduction
Even with the potential for social mobility, for LIFG students, colleges and universities also operate as sites of social reproduction. Household income and generational wealth favor college graduates who are not first-generation students. The Pew Research Center found that households with a first-generation bachelor’s degree holder had a median adjusted household income of $99,600, compared to $135,800 for households with a second-generation college degree holder. The same study showed that 35 percent of first-generation college graduates 22 to 59 years old held a master’s, professional, or doctoral degree, compared to 43 percent of their peers who were not first-generation students. And the median wealth of a household with a first-generation graduate was $152,000 compared to $244,500 for households with college graduates who had followed a parent’s footsteps. Some of this difference may relate to student debt, as 66 percent of first-generation graduates incurred education debt compared to 56 percent of their peers.
Some features of campus life may set LIFG students on a path within the college experience that contributes to differential outcomes and social reproduction. For example, the need to work campus jobs (login may be required to access the article) in dining services and custodial crews sets LIFG students apart from wealthier peers, and sorority and fraternity cultures have been shown to concentrate wealth advantage. A college degree also cannot overcome the effects of systemic racism and sexism. A Black woman with a college degree is likely to earn less than a Black man or a white woman with the same degree; Hispanic women with undergraduate degrees earn even less. So even with a college degree, equal opportunities for social mobility are not guaranteed for all LIFG students. Earning a college degree is an important element of social mobility for LIFG students, but it does not in itself level the playing field of intergenerational wealth.
Campus Climate for LIFG
Most four-year colleges and universities—and some community colleges—were not designed with low-income or first-generation students in mind. And until relatively recently, few considered what their campus felt like to LIFG students. For decades, elite institutions—and less elite but still selective institutions—have privileged continuing generation students directly, through legacy admissions and other programs focused on the children (and grandchildren) of their graduates. But campuses are also more welcoming to students whose parents attended other institutions. These students typically come equipped with a sense of “college knowledge”—how things are supposed to work and that there is someone to help resolve an academic or financial problem when things don’t work—and a sense of entitlement to seek out resources at higher rates. First-generation students are left to puzzle through bureaucracies of advising, financial aid, career services, health care, and more, without family guidance or intervention with the institution. The puzzlement can be amplified for first-generation students who are also low-income, as LIFG students face opaque processes such as financial aid verification.
In addition to navigating the institution without preexisting college knowledge, LIFG students on many campuses experience a sense of outsider status and marginalization. Student life may revolve around pay-to-play opportunities like fraternity and sorority life, recreational sports, and student organizations that charge dues. On a residential campus, LIFG students share rooms with students who may come from families of greater financial means who arrive to the residence hall outfitted with every device from the Apple Store. Working on- and off-campus jobs means less time for socializing with peers, and socializing may require allocating scarce funds. Students from wealthier families can take unpaid internships to enrich their future career possibilities, undertake expensive study abroad classes that are not covered in many financial aid packages, and enjoy time away from campus in exotic locations. Certainly not every wealthy student is jetting off to the tropics for spring break, but there are low-income, first-generation students on campuses where the spectrum of family wealth is concentrated in the highest quintile. The cumulative effect of social class privilege means that many LIFG students find themselves on the margins of campus life.
Recent efforts to name and lift up LIFG students and their experiences have created space to shift them from margins to center. Several scholars, including Elizabeth Aries and Maynard Seider, Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton, and Anthony Jack have raised awareness of the experiences of LIFG students at elite and selective institutions, and the #RealCollege movement, led by Sara Goldrick-Rab, has brought urgency to action for student basic needs at institutions of all types. Indeed, a core message of #RealCollege is that most LIFG students do not attend elite and selective institutions, and that community colleges and public comprehensive universities enroll the majority of these students. Increasingly, students claim the “first-generation” label and identity with pride, for example by using social media tagged #firstgenproud. National movements like Rise First curate resources for low-income, first-generation student success, and first-generation, low-income student programming and resource centers are emerging on some campuses (including UCLA, the University of Pennsylvania, and Reynolds Community College). To date, 215 campuses have been recognized as being “First-Gen Forward,” an indication that they are committed to LIFG student success. Transforming campus climate is notoriously difficult, but there are signs that climate for LIFG students may be improving.
Improving LIFG Experiences and Outcomes
It’s necessary to continue efforts to improve LIFG student experiences and outcomes. As noted, a good step is acknowledging the presence and honoring the resilience of low-income and first-generation students. Visibility campaigns like “I’m First” provide ways for staff and faculty to self-identify as first-generation college graduates themselves, providing role models and inspiration to LIFG students. Orientation and other transition programs that name first-generation status as a group identity creates space for LIFG students to find each other and name their experiences.
It is not enough to honor the resilience of LIFG students, however. It is important to transform colleges and universities so that they do not require so much resilience for LIFG students to persist and thrive. Carefully examining financial and other resources available to LIFG students for meeting basic needs as well as college needs in ways that are equitable with wealthier students is also essential, as is eliminating legacy admissions and other privileges. Campuses can audit curricular and cocurricular activities for places where having money or college knowledge matters in the experience or is a prerequisite for participation.
Finally, addressing deficit mindsets of instructors and staff can help transform the climate for LIFG students; valuing the assets of LIFG students and building curriculum around those assets promotes transformation of campus culture in the direction of equity.
Higher education has been an engine of both social mobility and social reproduction. It attracts low-income, first-generation college students with the promise of social mobility but has not always kept that promise. Institutions can learn lessons from the experiences of LIFG students in an effort to address the campus climate, retain students to graduation, and improve their outcomes.
Any opinions expressed in the articles in this publication are those of the author and not the American Sociological Association.
