The First Generation Student Experience: Implications for Campus Practice, and Strategies for Improving Persistence and Success

More first-generation students are attending college than ever before, and policy makers agree that increasing their participation in higher education is a matter of priority.

Despite this, there is no agreed definition about the term, few institutions can quantify how many first-generation students are enrolled, or mistakenly conflate them with low-income students, and many important dimensions to the first-generation student experience remain poorly documented. Few institutions have in place a clear, well-articulated practice for assisting first-generation students to succeed.

Given that first-generation students comprise over 40% of incoming freshmen, increasing their retention and graduation rates can dramatically increase an institution's overall retention and graduation rates, and enhance its image and desirability.

At the heart of the book are 14 first-person narratives—by first-generation students spanning freshman to graduate years—that help the reader get to grips with the variety of ethnic, economic categories to which they belong. The book concludes by defining 14 key issues that institutions need to address, and offers a course of action for addressing them.