First Generation College Students Essay

The competition in today’s job market makes it seemingly impossible to be considered a competitive candidate without having some sort of college degree. This very fact has pushed researchers to analyze and report on the performance of students with various educational backgrounds along with the factors that affect their ability to obtain a college degree. One particular subset of students who show interesting graduation patterns are first generation students, whose parents have do not have a college degree. First generation students frequently encounter difficulty in school and must jump over many hurdles in order to graduate and receive a college degree. These hurdles include language barriers, intergenerational gaps and social class achievement

Most first generation college students are significantly older than the average, approximately 24 year of age (Pascarella et. al 2004). The surrounding low-income environments that many of these students are raised around can explain this late age. This financial pressure can also explain another category of first generation students, preparation (Chen & Carroll, 2005). These students are often less prepared to enter the college life. They have not been exposed to the necessary preparation needed to succeed on college admissions tests and furthermore don’t meet the performance requirements that universities and institutions require. Analyzing the prefaces that surround the environment of first generation college students aids in understanding current problems faced in college as well as assist in proposing solutions for this subset of

An industry that once promoted fairness and attainability was now itself becoming an obstacle to overcome. “American universities are in fact organized according to middle- and upper-class cultural norms or rules of the game and that these norms do indeed constitute an unseen academic disadvantage for first-generation college students transitioning to university settings” (Stephens et. al, 2012). This proposed characteristic serves as an almost uncontrollable and unchangeable disadvantage that students will likely fail to subdue. Institutions should serve as mediating platforms that allow students to start at impartial grounds, where their talents, abilities and connections are the only factors that can influence their