**Co-published with
**
More first-generation students are attending college than ever before,
and policy makers agree that increasing their participation in higher
education is a matter of priority.
Despite this, there is no agreed definition about the term, few
institutions can quantify how many first-generation students are
enrolled, or mistakenly conflate them with low-income students, and many
important dimensions to the first-generation student experience remain
poorly documented. Few institutions have in place a clear,
well-articulated practice for assisting first-generation students to
succeed.
Given that first-generation students comprise over 40% of incoming
freshmen, increasing their retention and graduation rates can
dramatically increase an institution's overall retention and graduation
rates, and enhance its image and desirability.
It is clearly in every institution's self-interest to ensure its
first-generation students succeed, to identify and count them, and
understand how to support them. This book provides high-level
administrators with a plan of action for deans to create the awareness
necessary for meaningful long-term change, sets out a campus acclimation
process, and provides guidelines for the necessary support structures.
At the heart of the book are 14 first-person narratives - by
first-generation students spanning freshman to graduate years - that
help the reader get to grips with the variety of ethnic and economic
categories to which they belong. The book concludes by defining 14 key
issues that institutions need to address, and offers a course of action
for addressing them.
This book is intended for everyone who serves these students - faculty,
academic advisors, counselors, student affairs professionals, admissions
officers, and administrators - and offers a set of best practices for
how two- and four-year institutions can improve the success of their
first-generation student populations.
An ACPA Publication
