Accessing Family Wealth: First-Generation College Students and the Role of Family in Achieving College Success

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Abstract

Research on first-generation college students frequently focuses on the obstacles or disadvantages these students encounter, particularly in terms of cultural capital stemming from class and sometimes racial background. First-generation college students are often constructed in terms of their deficiencies, which are then used to explain lower levels of degree completion and academic achievement compared to continuing-generation counterparts. While the challenges first-generation students encounter are indeed important points of inquiry, the model of deficiency tends to diminish or ignore the cultural or family wealth that first-generation college students may access to facilitate their academic success (Yosso 2005). In other words, while families may lack knowledge of application procedures and university expectations that would benefit their students, they may nonetheless play integral roles through emotional support and modeling hard work and perseverance. Understanding this wealth allows for a more nuanced and complex assessment of the first-generation experience and positions first-generation students as more than the liabilities that deficit models tend to imply.

Authors

• Jennifer A Strangfeld, CSU Stanislaus

• Ann M. Strahm, California State University, Stanislaus