The lived experiences of minority/marginalized groups in higher education

• In Event: Empowerment and Social Justice

Proposal

The lived experiences of minority/marginalized groups in higher education
Theoretical Background and Research Purpose
Higher education is widely viewed as an important element towards fostering greater social mobility and social cohesion (Qodirova, 2022; Wilson-Strydom, 2015). Improving faculty diversity is expected to impact learning and research. Diversity in higher education has several potential benefits. First, it increases student retention and persistence in fields of study (McClain & Perry, 2017). Second, it prepares students for work in a global society, increases our knowledge base, promotes creative thinking, enhances self-awareness, enriches multiple perspectives (Mayer et al., 2018; Naheen & Elsharnouby, 2021). Third, education within a diverse setting better prepares students to be good citizens in an increasingly complex, pluralistic society (Kennedy, & Kuang, 2021; Umbac, 2006).
The ability to access and flourish in higher education has, however, historically been hampered for students from cultural, linguistic, ethnical, and religious minority backgrounds. Building on widespread calls for social justice in higher education, there has been an increasing focus on the need to promote and facilitate greater participation of marginalized groups higher education. As a consequence, considerable national and institutional policies and programs have been created to reach this aim. While there has been some improvement in participation rates, gaps are persistent (Reay, 2018; Sutton Trust, 2018). Significant research has addressed the issue of access and success to higher education (Hubble et al., 2021); however, this research tends to be large-scale quantitative studies; while such studies are important to understand the scale of the phenomenon, they are unable to grasp the nuances of individual lived experiences, which may shed light on the phenomenon in context, and supply new insights.
This research aims to explore the lived experiences of marginalized groups in higher education. Specifically, the research purpose is fourfold. First, to gain a critical understanding of the marginalized student population, especially at Bar-Ilan University. Second, to explore the perceptions of marginalized groups regarding the inhibiting and enabling factors to their access, participation, and academic success in higher education. Third, to explore how students exercise agency and meet the current challenges of academic success at Bar-Ilan University. Fourth, to design practical measures to address the needs of current and future marginalized students.
Method
The purposive sample included 30 participants, 18 women and 12 men. The sample included students of an Israeli higher education institution (Bar-Ilan) and prospective students currently underrepresented in Israeli higher education institutions: Ultra-Orthodox, Arabs, first generation students, and new immigrants. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews (Rossman & Rallis, 2012).
Results
Preliminary data analysis pointed to factors inhibiting and enabling access, participation and success in higher education. Specifically, this pilot study of marginalized students from Bar-Ilan University in Israel yielded four major themes as hindering and challenging their academic success and participation in Higher Education: (1) Academic and linguistic, (2) Financial, (3) Social and (4) Cultural.
Discussion and Implications
While the findings suggest the need for a differential strategy adapted to the diverse needs of the different ethnic and religious groups, the lived experiences of participants emphasized the importance of academic and financial support across the sample. Difference in language, cultural codes and values, seem to affect all sectors culturally, socially and academically. Furthermore, students pointed to difficulty being understood and seen as well as difficulty to communicate and intereact with other students (feeling of exclusion and alienation). Financial support which was recognized as a significant factor that affects the quantity and quality of time that underrepresented students have available for their studies. Importantly, many underrepresented students reported being stressed as a result of coordinating and balancing work-family-study schedules especially the woman participants.
Importantly, where academic and financial support were lacking, successful students often filled the gap with an alternate source of support, an emotional support through friends, family, academic and administrative staff; indicating their agency, ingenuity and entrepreneurialism. Notwithstanding the differences in the systems, as educator we should reminded that youth everywhere develop the dream of making a better life for themselves, often through education. Thus, addressing the challenges of widening student participation calls for considerations of what social justice means, how it translates into policy and practice and the relationships, connections and disconnections between individual conditions and strategies, institutional and national policies and practices.
 

Author

• Pascale benoliel, Bar Ilan University