The Multidimensionality of College Fit and Why It Matters

• In Event: Higher Education, Belonging, and Employment

Abstract

Scholars often explain bachelor’s degree (BA) completion as resulting from strong fit between student and college, while also suggesting that lower-income students fit best at less-selective, public colleges. Why, then, do just 55 percent of students attending such colleges graduate? Drawing on the social-psychological literature on hope and the theory of inhabited institutions, we argue for a more granular account of fit. Our findings, based on 168 longitudinal interviews among 56 students, administrative records, and 35 college administrator interviews, show that both students and colleges exist in multidimensional resource spaces resulting in heterogeneous forms of fit. However, colleges respond to this heterogeneity in highly-patterned ways, privileging certain student resources but not others. Unequal college experiences and BA outcomes result.

Authors

• Zennon Black, Harvard University

• Christina Ciocca Eller, Harvard University