Students First: Improving First-Generation Student Retention in Higher Education

Peter Collier, Principal Investigator
cfpc@pdx.edu
503-725-3961

Consultants: David Morgan (PSU, Interdisciplinary Studies) and Amy Driscoll

Sponsors: U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Post-secondary Education (FIPSE) and the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA)

Students First is a demonstration project which will develop and test cost-effective advising interventions to improve low income, first-generation student retention (those whose parents did not attend college). Background-appropriate advising and mentoring has been shown to be effective in increasing first-generation student retention in federally funded TRIO intervention programs such as Student Support Services (SSS) and the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP). Students in these programs show a 7% increase in retention compared to comparable freshmen receiving regular university advising (Muraskin, 1997). Since substantial numbers of first-generation students aren't admitted to TRIO programs due to lack of space and receive little if any additional support, Students First is being designed to meet the need for a less intensive, more cost-effective program than TRIO but that still demonstrates positive effects on retention. It specifically targets an underserved, virtually invisible population: students who meet federal guidelines of being low-income and first-generation, yet who aren't accepted in TRIO programs.

It will combine strategies adapted from Collier’s Differentiated Model of Role Acquisition with best advising practices from TRIO programs into a new low cost multi-layered mentoring program that promises to be easily delivered to the growing number of students in need of services.

Theoretical Rationale: From an Identity Theory perspective, “role” is a critical element in student success, both in defining social identities, understanding and anticipating faculty expectations and accessing resources to achieve goals such as financial aid, good grades and graduation (Baker & Faulkner, 1991; Callero, 1994). The Differentiated Model of Identity Acquisition (Collier, 2000, 2001) proposes that there are multiple, alternative conceptions of any student role and students vary in their ability to recognize and employ different versions.

A recent pilot study (Collier and Morgan, 2002) demonstrated that students who have a better understanding of faculty expectations for student roles (class-related skills and behaviors such as understanding the syllabus, identifying course-related secondary skills, and amount of time spent on coursework) get better grades. First-generation students' academic performance was most affected by these expectation variables. From their parents, traditional students learn different “interactional strategies or roles” and how to appropriately utilize them to understand differences between their classes and professors’ expectations. These advantaged students' higher retention rates have been linked to greater levels of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990) due to their parents' educational attainment rather than to differences in individual intellectual capacity or effort. First-generation students do not have this opportunity for parental advice to help them identify and resolve role-based problems and understand the university's expectations for students.