Consider the following two scenarios. In the first, two colleagues set off on a rather challenging hike in the morning with the goal of summiting a local mountain by nightfall. One has hiked in this region before and has a fairly sophisticated working knowledge of the terrain; indeed, she grew up in a family of outdoors types. While she has never been on this particular trail before, she feels prepared for the adventure ahead, understands the risks and challenges, and is confident in her ability to navigate the trek successfully. The other hiker is new to exploring the outdoors and has never undertaken an adventure such as this. She knows very few people who have gone hiking and has very little working knowledge about the culture of hiking in general. In this endeavor, her family can offer very little help as she prepares for the task ahead. As a result, her expectations are low, and she has little confidence in being able to keep up with her colleague and successfully reach the summit. Since neither one of the hikers has experienced this particular trail, they are both considered novices.

The second scenario hits closer to home. At the time of this writing, I had recently attended one of my son's Little League baseball games. On his team was a boy who had never played the sport before. In fact, he was quite unfamiliar with the elements of baseball and brought to his first experience a limited knowledge of the basic mechanics and flow of the game. He showed great interest and passion and was excited about the opportunity to learn and play a new sport. Following a series of first inning mishaps – gaffes and errors, missed catches, and overthrown balls, the kind native to 8‐year‐old boys' baseball games – the team fell far behind and earned the ire of an overzealous coach, who yelled at them as they walked off the field. The boy who had never played before, and who his mother later told me was very sensitive, took the tirade personally and broke down crying. He removed himself from the field and his mother took him home not long after. His spirit seemed to be broken and I worried that he would forever be lost to the prospects of playing a sport because of such a negative experience for which he seemed unprepared.

These two simple scenarios have complex connotations and significant implications for our work in higher education. What happens to our college students, and particularly first‐generation students, when they experience something unfamiliar where other students seem to be more prepared? And what happens when students find themselves in deep holes for which small ladders offer no help in the climb out? The path to and through college for is different each student and depends on many factors – race, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, preparedness, access, opportunity, and interest among them – and the likelihood of success is contingent upon the ability to access resources and navigate a challenging landscape.

While there is variance around the world in terms of perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes about the purpose and mission of higher education, going to college has become a “rite of passage” for each generation of prospective students. There is an expectation for many around the world that they will go to college, and most agree that attending college has become a necessity for improving one's personal, professional, financial, cultural, and social well‐being. For students and their families, it is not as much of a question of “whether” one will go, but rather “where,” “when,” and “how.” And while colleges and universities throughout the centuries, both in the United States and abroad, have helped shape and promote this rite of passage, they have perhaps been more focused on the “rite” (by providing access to and through the educational pipeline) and less so on the “passage” (understanding and meeting the needs of students no matter what route they took into higher education). Perhaps all colleges and universities have at some time point thought it was enough to admit students and leave them to navigate their own way to either success or failure, but that is an outdated perspective that had more relevance in a time when higher education was reserved for a privileged few. With increasingly favorable access to college and university life for greater numbers of students around the world, institutions of higher education can no longer afford to simply admit and forget. They must change their frame from one of benign neglect to one of intentional attention, particularly where the success of first‐generation students is concerned.

A Brief Background on the Status of First‐Generation Students

The research is clear that first‐generation students have a more difficult transition to college and university life, experience greater challenges in terms of academic preparation, and are more likely to come from any number of underrepresented ethnic groups than their non‐first‐generation counterparts; their status makes them more vulnerable, as Bui (2002) notes, to lower academic performance. Many other studies and reports (Terenzini et al. 1996; Warburton et al. 2001; Davis 2010; Ward et al. 2012) support this point. To that end, first‐generation students are often labeled at‐risk and more likely to experience difficult challenges in entering college; if we assume this is true then it makes sense they experience college life differently than their non‐first‐generation counterparts. Considering these challenges, it is not difficult to understand why college administrators, faculty, and staff are increasingly more enlightened to the at‐risk nature of the first‐generation students student population. However, a problem abides in that administrators, faculty, and staff are not always aligned in their understanding of the first‐generation student profile on campus, and as a result may be misaligned in applying solutions geared toward first‐generation student success. Decades of research on first‐generation students underscore the nature of the problem and the disconnect between student expectations and the reality of their experience.

Terenzini et al. (1996) found first‐generation students typically studied fewer hours and took fewer credits as compared with the traditional non‐first‐generation student. In addition, first‐generation students worked more hours, which has been identified by Pike and Kuh (2005) as often having a negative impact on time spent studying out of class and being involved in activities on campus. Given the continually rising costs of attending college and the necessity for many students, first‐generation and non‐first‐generation alike, to work one or more jobs to survive, this is a troubling development.

In addition, other scholars (Fallon 1997; Warburton et al. 2001; Bui 2002) have explored pre‐college background characteristics and various aspects of the first‐year experience and reported that first‐generation students perceive themselves to be less knowledgeable about college in general and less prepared than non‐first‐generation students, and that they tend to be more worried about financial issues. Overall, trends in the research suggest that first‐generation students encounter more challenges than their non‐first‐generation peers.

The implications for colleges and universities across the globe in terms of trends in population growth are compelling. Looking at the United States, for example, the demographics of students entering the higher education system in 30 years will be vastly different than they are today. According to a Pew Research Report on U.S. population trends (Passel and Cohn 2008), the nation's demographic mix will be very different by 2050, with non‐Hispanic Whites making up only 47% of the population, as compared to 67% in 2005. The subpopulation of African Americans, Latinx, and Asian Americans will collectively be the majority, with Latinx representation doubling over the 2005–2050 time period.

Embedded within the demographics conversation is the issue of immigration, which has been at the center of political debate in the United States for many years. New immigrants and the children born to them will account for fully 82% of the population increase over the 2005–2050 period (Passel and Cohn 2008), and this will have far‐reaching implications for the way colleges and universities plan and deliver their services. What the population change might yield in terms of both the volume and status of first‐generation students remains to be seen. But the projected demographic changes in America are instructive for the future work of college and university scholars and practitioners. With a better understanding of projected enrollment trends and a commitment to addressing increasingly diverse levels of student need, colleges and universities will be better positioned to provide students – first‐generation and non‐first‐generation student alike – with opportunities for success.

In this chapter, I explore some of the trends in international higher education regarding meeting the needs of first‐generation college students. Some of the most powerful studies have drawn on the voices of college and university students, making use of qualitative data and various forms of qualitative methodologies such as interviews, focus groups, personal stories, artistic and multimedia representations, linguistic analyses, and forms of storytelling. Further, I examine some of the predominant themes and theories from the higher education literature on student success and highlight implications for first‐generation students. Finally, I make the case for adopting a new language to reimagine the work we as scholars and practitioners do with first‐generation students and offer some questions faculty and administrators (and students themselves) might address in order to change their perceptions of the way in which first‐generation students interact with the college environment.

Perhaps because of the nature of the American educational system, with its historical commitment – however inconsistent – to access and opportunity and the development of a tiered framework of institutions that includes community colleges, small liberal arts colleges, regional and state universities, and research universities, the preponderance of the literature on first‐generation students focuses on the college experience in the United States. However, a growing body of research is beginning to look at the subject globally. As educational systems around the world become more open to traditionally underrepresented student populations and welcome to their institutions of higher education a broader array of student skill sets, greater variability in terms of academic preparation, and differing degrees of cultural capital, scholars and practitioners in the field will begin to better understand the comparative distinctions between first‐generation students in different countries and will have a greater appreciation for the dynamic experiences overall.

The growing literature on international first‐generation students has added new dimensions to the discussion of culturally relative student success (Thomas and Quinn 2006; O'Shea 2007, 2015; David et al. 2009; Gofen 2009; Benson et al. 2010; Heymann and Carolissen 2011; Burke 2012; Devlin and O'Shea 2012; Manago 2012; Kutty 2014; Miethe and Soremski 2014; May et al. 2016; Stone et al. 2016; Kearney and Glen 2017; Bell and Santamaria 2018). For example, Yosso's (2005) research examines the concept of cultural wealth and moves the conversation away from a deficit perspective – which sees the student as disadvantaged and the cultural capital they bring to college as impoverished – to one of a shared community of culture, whereby individuals benefit from an array of cultural knowledge, skills, and abilities possessed by traditionally underrepresented or marginalized groups. The literature gives agency to new, or alternative, conversations about cultural capital and focuses on the ways in which institutions might draw from the rich tapestry of culture students bring with them to college and incorporate certain elements of it into classroom learning.

A Word About Terminology and the Global Perspective

The terminology commonly used by international scholars to discuss the nuances of international first‐generation students varies slightly across the global diaspora, but two particular terms – “first‐in‐family” and “first‐generation” – tend to be most prevalent in the literature. In the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, the term “first‐in‐family” predominates (Bell and Santamaria 2018; Chowdry et al. 2012; O'Shea 2007), while in the United States and Canada, “first‐generation” is more common (Thomas and Quinn 2006; Davis 2010; Ward et al. 2012); the latter underscores the nature of the intergenerational factors that influence students' experiences. In a recent edited book by Bell and Santamaria (2018), which highlights research on first‐generation students from several countries (South Africa, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States), most of the authors use the term “first‐generation.” This chapter employs “first‐generation student” to refer to those who are the first in their family to attend college or university.

Themes from the Higher Education Research on First‐Generation Students

From a review of the literature on first‐generation students, several themes emerge that underscore the challenges and opportunities for learning that such students face. This section will focus on four themes that have particular relevance for understanding the first‐generation student from a global perspective: widening participation, cultural capital and cultural reproduction, self‐efficacy, and college impact, involvement, and engagement. Taken together, these themes provide a comprehensive portrait of the various issues affecting first‐generation students from the global perspective.

The Global Landscape of First‐Generation Student Research

Globally, there seems to be a methodological trend toward employing the use of qualitative research methods to examine the experiences of first‐generation students. The qualitative framework – interviews, focus groups, observations, document analyses, and the like – offers a platform to explore the student voice, which, for underrepresented students in particular, has not been prominently featured in the literature. For several decades leading up to the turn of the twenty‐first century, the preponderance of research on the college student experience was quantitative in nature (Pace 1979; Pascarella and Terenzini 1991; Tinto 1994; Astin 1999). Qualitative studies throughout the latter part of the twentieth century and into the new millennium have added new layers of texture and provided a richer understanding of the student experience. Nowhere has this development been more significant than in the growing body of research on first‐generation college students.

Gofen's (2009) study of Israeli first‐generation students examines positive aspects of parental involvement and identifies the ways first‐generation students use their family as a resource to help them find success in college. She reframes the commonly held perception that a lack of cultural capital negatively impacts the success of first‐generation students (and that inheriting first‐generation status from their parents condemns then to failure as opposed to success), and focuses instead on the way in which first‐generation students might succeed in college because of their family, not despite it. Employing a grounded theory approach, including interviews with 50 Israeli first‐generation students, Gofen examines the key aspects of the family dynamics that foster college success. Noting the importance of parental involvement in children's education – primarily the parent's objectives, their attitudes toward their own education, and their daily expressions prioritizing education – she argues that “families of first‐generation students are often a key resource rather than a constraint” (p. 114). She credits much of the success to families prioritizing education and translating that into everyday living. Similarly, McCarron and Inkelas (2006) find a positive relationship between parental involvement and the educational aspirations of first‐generation students. They note, “The constructive inclusion of parents in the educational process may serve to not only boost students' aspirations but also to diminish the negative effect of college culture shock” (p. 546).

In Australia, the higher education system is experiencing growth and diversification, with more widespread participation from students of low socioeconomic status (LSES) (Devlin and O'Shea 2012). The Australian government has made a commitment to support this population and has set specific targets and standards to provide opportunities and meet their needs. In a study focusing on the success of first‐generation students and drawing from interviews with more than 50 students specifically about the impact of teaching, Devlin and O'Shea (2012) discovered five major themes in terms of teaching being important to success: (i) available to help/approachability; (ii) enthusiasm/dedication and rapport with students; (iii) communication skills; (iv) clarifies assessment requirements; and (v) promptness. The research at the core of this underscores the importance of understanding the role of teaching and instruction in first‐generation student success and the need to address changes in the culture of educational delivery as opposed to changes in the students themselves.

A longitudinal study by Jehangir (2010) examined the impact of first‐generation student participation in a multicultural learning community, which employed aspects of critical pedagogy to bring out the students' experiences. The learning community, in conjunction with multicultural education and critical pedagogy, was designed as a space where “students could cultivate identity, community, and a sense of agency” (p. 540). To understand the voice and narrative around the first‐generation student experience, the authors gathered qualitative data using reflective writing samples and interviews. They found the learning community validated the students and created a sense of belonging. The authors maintain that students are more apt to succeed when institutions create opportunities for them to incorporate their own cultural wealth and capital into their experience.

In parts of the Western world, there seems to be increasing action on the part of governments to galvanize resources and put into place programs and opportunities for people from lower socioeconomic status and other traditionally disadvantaged populations to participate in society in meaningful ways. These movements are concerned with promoting the success of disadvantaged learners and lower‐skilled workers and are an attempt to counter national threats to economic growth and sustainability. Whether because of economic crises or drastic social or political changes, these initiatives, when partnered with colleges and universities, are seen as an investment in a new generation of productive citizens, according to the various local and national government agencies that are involved with them.

In South Africa, for example, a government initiative was created in the context of a perceived skills shortage in various quantitative‐based jobs (engineering and built environment professions) (Luckett and Luckett 2009). One strategy has been to increase enrollment and graduation rates in college and university fields such as life and physical sciences and engineering. Jointly funded by the Western Cape provincial government's Department of Transport and Public Works and the National Skills Fund, the Masakh'iSizwe Bursary Programme grants full bursaries, or college expenses, to disadvantaged learners recruited from financially disadvantaged families and rural communities. The project is an attempt to develop new cohorts of professionals who are lifelong learners and citizens committed to service. South Africa is only two decades removed from apartheid, and as such still faces great challenges regarding college participation, retention, graduation, and success. To address these problems, some institutions of higher learning have developed “extended degree programmes” (EDPs) and external support courses (Kelly‐Laubscher et al. 2018) that give students the opportunity to track on an extended curriculum that provides them with more time to develop the academic foundations necessary for their success. Kelly‐Laubscher et al. (2018) report that the programs bridge the articulation gap for students and mediate the often difficult language transition they face when entering university. An interesting dynamic to the study is the methodology used to capture student voice – an important aspect in understanding the role of language in self‐perception and identity development among students. Recognizing that many students struggle to find their voice and express ideas in an alternative language like English – the official medium of instruction for most high schools in South Africa – the authors employed the use of both interviews and drawings to gather data. Essentially, students were asked to “draw their ‘journey to’, ‘journey into’ and ‘journey through university” (p. 103). The drawings and accompanying interview data provide a rich tapestry of information about how students talk about and interpret their own educational journey; further, they provide insight into how students navigate the various programs that have been provided for their academic success.

Working with First‐Generation Students: A Paradox

A problematic paradox in working with first‐generation students is that when colleges and universities increase the number of students from varied backgrounds – in terms of socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, cultural background, mental health status, learning disabilities, and representing a wide range of skills and levels of preparedness – they often face conflicting views about institutional priorities and how best to meet the students' often disparate needs. Thus, with the overall expansion of the footprint of first‐generation students in higher education, it becomes necessary to further broaden the resource base along the preparedness continuum. Colleges and universities are under great pressure to meet the needs of a growing student population, but they are often not prepared to do so. This is similar to the growing internationalization of colleges and universities in the United States, whereby institutions enroll increasing numbers of international students and are continually challenged to meet their needs. The fact remains that as institutions change their enrollment footprint and provide access to an ever more diversified student population, they face increasing challenges in providing support for that population and adjusting their resource modeling, planning, programming, and delivery of services to meet its needs.

New Ways to Reimagine Work with First‐Generation Students

One purpose of this chapter is to make the case that we as scholars, administrators, faculty, and practitioners alike should develop a new (or at least an alternative) narrative and language around first‐generation students and reconceptualize the way our higher education institutions plan, program, and deliver services to this population. It will require that we reimagine our work and map new terminology to the concept of working with first‐generation students. Drawing on the work of Bean (1998), I suggest here a new framework for understanding the experiences of these students and the nature of the relationship between entering students and the institutions who serve them. Because language shapes how we see ourselves and others, it is a useful exercise to think about how adopting new languages and definitions of things might shape new images of ourselves and others.

Bean's research examines the roles and experiences of college and university faculty, and it serves as an important clarion call to reimagine faculty work using alternative languages and narratives. Discussing the managerial roles of faculty and the nature of our concept of faculty work, he suggests a paradigm shift is necessary to reframe our notions around faculty teaching, research, and service. He discusses elements of the current linguistic patterns used to refer to faculty work, develops a new language, and considers how new terms in practice might redefine how faculty perceive their work.

Bean (1998) laments:

How do we talk about higher education now? This is the language I hear: efficiency, productivity, technology, credit hours generated, grants with overhead received, accountability, assessment, competition, costs, total quality management. This is not the language of education or morality or scholarship or learning or community; it is the language of counting, accountants, accountability and, to a greater or lesser extent, it is how we imagine our enterprise. (p. 497)

The patterns of language – efficiency, productivity, and the like – that have evolved over time because of the research enterprise and the focus on accountability and assessment in the professoriate have led faculty to a sort of “heightened awareness” (p. 497) where they feel they are constantly being measured and evaluated by rubrics that are not entirely of their own making. In essence, the focus on productivity and efficiency has come at the expense of faculty community and service and the integrity of the academic guild. These two frames of reference – administration‐driven productivity, with a focus on rubrics to measure efficiency, and faculty‐driven self‐governance, with a focus on satisfaction and morale, core faculty values, and quality of teaching and service – are not incompatible, nor are the debates around them irreconcilable; rather, one has seemed to supplant the other and has rendered the two in opposition to each other.

So, in reimagining faculty work, Bean suggests employing new languages – those of play, mysticism, soulfulness, passion, mythology, madness, emotions, art, community, and archetypal images – to more closely align faculty with their core values and redefine their roles. The notion here is that a paradigm shift – modeled, perhaps, after Bean's work – is needed to foster success at both the institutional and the student level.

But it is not enough for scholars, practitioners, and faculty to adopt alternative languages to guide their behavior and their work with entering first‐generation students; we must encourage the students themselves to amend their self‐talk and the way they describe their experiences. Some might argue that in doing so, educators risk silencing student voices, and that the mere suggestion of having them adopt other patterns of language that might be dissimilar or foreign to their own is akin to attempting to speak for them, or otherwise to manipulate their language for the purpose of normalizing their speech. This is a paternalistic notion that at once colonizes language and diminishes the voices that try to use it. It would be antithetical to the very purpose of qualitative methodology, in which researchers attempt to capture the lived experiences of participants through various manners of individual and group interviews. Nevertheless, asking participants to consider ways they might amend their own internal dialog to change their self‐perception or develop new ways of enhancing their self‐efficacy would be a useful tool for researchers and scholars. Schademan and Thompson (2016) offer a promising qualitative model for institutions engaging students in a collaborative dialog for the purpose of enhancing student success. Their study investigates the role of “cultural agents” (i.e. faculty who enact classroom practices that are intentionally designed to help students feel and become more academically prepared) in shaping students' positive perceptions and beliefs about their academic experience. Faculty in the study engaged in “discourses or readiness” (p. 199) when talking about the capacity for student success; these included “beliefs about students' capabilities to succeed in college, beliefs in their own backgrounds as a resource in serving students, and the ways in which these beliefs influenced the specific pedagogies they utilized in the classroom” (p. 199).

As Demetriou et al. (2017) suggest, much of the research on first‐generation students focuses not on their success, but on the likelihood they will not succeed. The tenor of the national conversation around first‐generation students is indeed deficit‐based; it points out the ways in which students must compensate for their shortcomings and how they face a treacherous academic and social landscape that bodes ill for their success. If we continue to build programs and services from a deficit‐based perspective (e.g. one that frames the conversation around underprepared students as lacking in some commodity or being behind in some way) then students may develop habits of learning that at best meet low expectations and at worst contribute to an identity development that affirms their thoughts of not belonging.

Conclusion

Whether we focus on the experiences of Indigenous first‐generation students at an Australian University, the narratives of Israeli first‐generation students, the first‐in‐family status of Latinx students at predominantly White institutions in the United States, or the differences between two Black populations (one comprising first‐generation students, the other non‐first‐generation students) in post‐apartheid South Africa, where both have traditionally been discriminated against, we must recognize that all students who are the first in their family to attend college or university are pioneers. They shoulder a significant burden in trying to gain access to, and succeed in, higher education under very challenging conditions. Those first‐generation students currently in the pipeline of college and university life will one day yield to the next generation, who will be second‐generation students. Unfortunately, in terms of student success, the predominance of studies on first‐generation students suggest that they come into their college experience with a deficit. Facing the problem of stigma and isolation, first‐generation students are often made to feel – both intentionally and unintentionally – that they are second‐class citizens and at a disadvantage in terms of their preparedness for college and university life. This has tremendous implications in terms of both academic socialization and interpersonal socialization, as well as self‐efficacy.

Finally – and this may be the most important aspect of studying first‐generation students – we come to the question of the relationship between institutions and their students, and the role each plays in shaping the educational experience. To be sure, institutions of higher education and students alike bear a significant responsibility in engaging one another in the educational enterprise. Certainly, colleges and universities need to do more to engage students – particularly first‐generation students – in educationally purposeful activities and other opportunities designed for their learning, and ultimately their success. But students and their families also need to take more initiative in seeking out experiences that clearly enhance their chances for success and in finding appropriate resources to help them become better prepared. This is a mutually shaping process that requires an honest reflection by both parties on the strengths and limitations they each bring to the academic experience. It follows that a mutually shaping process should lead to multibeneficial outcomes.

If the global higher education community offers students access to its colleges and universities, it has the moral obligation to provide the necessary resources to help them develop to the best of their abilities – academic and otherwise. If colleges and universities make intentional efforts to widen student participation, they must widen their resource base accordingly.

On a final personal note, I once had the honor of sitting between two former governors of the state of South Carolina at a dinner function, and the two were sharing fabled stories about their days in office. One of them shared a comment that has particular relevance for our collective work with first‐generation students. He quipped, “There is an old saying in South Carolina politics that goes like this: ‘I am for change and you are for change. You go first!’” We approach change in higher education with caution even if we know all constituents involved are committed to the process. So, for the question of who should go first, it would behoove us all to move forward together.

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