Family Support of Latino Community College Students' Transfer to Four-Year Universities

• In Event: 25.023 - Neoliberal Policies and Family Engagement: New Perspectives, New Contexts

Abstract

Families play a role in students’ school choices not only in K–12, but throughout their education. When students make decisions about higher educational institutions, a key factor in students’ decisions is family involvement and supports. Although some policymakers and scholars have argued that the influence of family may constrain students’ choices geographically, the influences of “significant others” in distinct educational settings have proven to have an overall positive effect on the academic and social transition to college as well as student persistence (Nora, 2001).

Few scholars have examined how family engagement plays a role in the decisions of current community college students transferring to four-year universities. Community colleges have received renewed attention from policymakers and advocates seeking to increase college attendance and completion rates (Atkinson & Geiser, 2009), due in part to the large proportions of low-income first-generation students of color in community colleges. However, community colleges have a complex role in fostering student completion and success (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009). While over 80% of students entering community college students intend to transfer to a four-year institution, only about 25% actually do so within five years (Jenkins & Fink, 2015). To understand why transfer rates are so low, we explore community college students’ decision making processes and supports as they choose where to apply.

As such, we explore how community college students in Texas navigate the institutional context, and the roles that their social ties to community, immediate family, and other relatives play in the decision making process (Karp, 2011; Schudde & Goldrick-Rab, 2014).

Using asset-based theoretical frameworks such as the community cultural wealth model (Yosso, 2005) and funds of knowledge theory (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 2001) we explore the significance of family involvement in the transfer choice process. An asset-based approach for examining the impact of family involvement acknowledges the cultural wealth that Latino/a students leverage in navigating their college experience (Rendon, Nora, & Kanagala, 2014).

Our study seeks to examine the following:
1. How do Latin@ community college students’ perceive the role of families in their decision making processes and transfer choices?
2. In which ways does familismo influence the transfer choices of Latin@ community college students?

Drawing on in-depth interviews with a diverse sample of 100 students from two community college systems in Central Texas, we explore how families support students in the choice-making process, focusing in particular on the role of family involvement for first-generation, low-income college students.

We find that family involvement and supports shaped the “choice sets” of community college students, and that families played a complex role in the lives of community college students, providing inspiration and emotional, informational, and financial supports, among others. Our work has significant implications for leveraging families and parents in aiding community college students as they seek to transfer to 4-year institutions, and throughout the various pathways to higher education.

Authors

• Huriya Jabbar, The University of Texas - Austin

• Carmen Serrata, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

• Eliza Epstein, The University of Texas - Austin

• Joanna Dolores Sanchez, Howard University