Access for All

Expanding Opportunity and Programs to Support Successful Student Outcomes at University of Nevada, Reno

Melisa N. Choroszy, Theodor M. Meek, Melisa N. Choroszy, Theodor M. Meek

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781948908191
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

For many students in Nevada and throughout the nation, they are the first in their family to go to college—these students are identified as "first-generation." The population of first-generation students continues to increase year-over-year and their unique needs have shaped the way education practitioners must approach serving future students effectively.This collection of essays, written by University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) faculty and students, is an examination of the programs and strategies created to support first-generation and other underrepresented student populations. In addition, it serves as a dedication to the families and students whose hopes and dreams include the attainment of a college degree. Readers will gain insight into the framework needed to provide accessible programs and services to a large and diverse student population before, during, and after college graduation as well as first-hand success stories from the students themselves.Each generation hopes for a better life for their children. Higher education, in particular, has been a dream for many in this country that has been made possible through public and private financial support. Every new generation of college-bound students faces new and evolving challenges, but the fierce dedication and commitment demonstrated in these pages define the key to developing a thriving and diverse institution that helps all students succeed.

PART I

Cultivating the College-Going Culture

The best college planning and preparation is said to begin in the student’s formative years of their early education. In actuality, for some students it may seem that college preparation starts on the day of the application deadline. Regardless, one thing is for certain: Any form of preparation for higher education is vital to the success of a student’s time in college. Services originating out of higher education must be prepared to support every student, regardless of their level of college preparation. The programs discussed in this section seek to engage students at all age levels, from sixth and seventh grades, to their final year of high school.

CHAPTER 1

The “College Knowledge” Gap

Time to Test Our Assumptions Directly

JENNIFER LOWMAN, PH.D.

Jennifer Lowman, Ph.D. is the director of the Office of Student Persistence Research at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her research background is in the social psychology of educational and occupational pathways. She supports program assessment and conducts original research for the continuous improvement of programs and services on campus.

First-generation college students (FGCS) have less college knowledge than continuing-generation students. College knowledge is a dimension of college readiness that captures the awareness and ability to navigate procedures and cultural expectations both before (Vargas, 2004) and after (Conley, 2008) students enter college. First-generation students have parents who have little information or advice to give, as they did not attend college; furthermore, research shows high school counselors are not good proxies for post-enrollment information (Rosenbaum, 2001; Rueda, 2005). First-generation college students enter college with less college knowledge to such an extent that their adjustment, involvement, academic progress, persistence, and graduation are significantly lower or “at-risk” (Chen, 2005; Choy, 2001; Ishitani, 2003; Rosenbaum, Deil-Amen, & Person, 2006).

College-preparation programs, especially those that are federally funded such as GEAR UP or the TRiO programs (e.g., Talent Search, Upward Bound), provide students the procedural information needed to access college, but not necessarily to graduate from college (Gandara & Bail, 2001; Perna, 2002). Even then, such procedural information is secondary to program goals and activities meant to inspire students to attend college (Perna, 2002). The increase in college aspirations over the last few decades has been substantial, as has enrollment in college, especially community college (Snyder & Dillow, 2016). This may be in no small part due to the efforts of preparation programs. Unfortunately, their impact is difficult to evaluate for a number of methodological and analytical reasons. Although college-preparation programs claim doubling the college-going rate among first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students, these claims lack evidence and obfuscate details on destinations by college type (two-year or four-year) or enrollment intensity (part-time or full-time) (Gandara & Bail, 2001).

College-preparation programs also attempt to deliver procedural information to parents. Unfortunately, parent involvement in preparation programs is a well-known challenge even in the quarter of programs for which it is mandatory (Perna, 2002; Swail & Perna, 2000). Nonetheless, getting procedural information to parents is paramount, as it may not only increase college access, but persistence as well. For example, college access and persistence increased when parents worked one-on-one with a professional on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (Bettinger et al., 2012), which is widely perceived as one of the biggest bureaucratic hurdles to college access. The mechanism through which this intensive support increased persistence needs more research, especially considering scaling up a program of dedicated professional guidance for each FGCS’s family is not realistic.

Once in college, FGCS college knowledge is not assessed at entry or as a condition for access to support programs and resources while enrolled. Failure to directly assess college knowledge creates both programmatic and analytic problems for college-success programs. First, the ubiquitous use of parent education to identify first-generation students maintains an assumption that all FGCS have a deficit of college knowledge and this deficit explains their relatively poor college outcomes. Second, by extension, the impact of collegiate support programs on FGCS procedural and cultural knowledge is difficult to demonstrate because it is not directly assessed. We need to stop relying on indirect approaches such as parent education for identification and program membership for impact. We need to assess the gap in college knowledge assumed to exist and which college-success programs purport to close.

The Problem Relying on Parent Education

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has produced a wealth of information describing the preparation, enrollment, persistence, transfer, and graduation of first-generation students defined as students whose parents never enrolled in a postsecondary certificate or degree program (see, for example, Choy, 2001 and her review of research based on the NCES longitudinal surveys: NELS, BPS, and B&B national longitudinal surveys). The most widely cited research on FGCS outcomes is based on NCES surveys that use this definition, including the oft-cited Toolbox studies by Clifford Adelman (1999; 2004; 2006).

It appears that children are not good sources for parental education attainment. Adelman (1999) found that only fifty percent of students correctly identified their parents’ level of educational attainment. When accuracy is a concern, it is best to have the parent report their educational attainment as applicants do when they apply for federal financial aid. Moreover, measurement should approximate a continuous scale to identify gradations in the contribution of parental postsecondary experiences to the next generation’s educational attainment. For example, there appear to be benefits of having parents with “some college” compared to having parents with no college, which include increased enrollment, persistence, and graduation (Chen, 2005; Choy, 2001).

This brings to light two related issues with current approaches in measurement: (1) Dichotomous indicators, wherein students are labeled either first-generation or not, conceals important differences between students and hides potentially beneficial experiences parents may have had in postsecondary educational settings, perhaps less traditional settings, that did not lead to a certificate or degree; and (2) a reliance on categories of degree completion (e.g., high school completion, associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree, graduate degree) that may allow for more fine-grained identification of differences, also obscures experiences or paths in postsecondary educational settings that do not lead to a traditional certificate or degree. The positive benefit of some college on student outcomes is an important one to document and understand, but current practices overlook its contribution. As such, it tends to be ignored by practitioners when they make decisions about whom to target for services and outreach.

Overall, parent education is an indirect indicator of the college knowledge we assume students may or may not hold at the time they enter college. Much of the research on which patterns of enrollment, persistence, and graduation is based uses the cutoff point “high school or less” to generate a profile of first-generation student outcomes. It is important to keep in mind that this is a practical and analytical decision made for analyzing and summarizing data. Conceptually, parent education captures exposure to mainstream educational opportunity. Although it is useful to make comparisons of average exposure for different social groups to identify disparities and demand change, we must not lose sight of all the variation around the average or fail to see how different experiences intersect. Essentially, practitioners have to go beyond the conceptual limitations posed by singular indicators to identify the mechanisms through which they can create change and increase educational opportunity. We should continue to examine the influence of parent education but limit its use to research and reporting; we should not continue to use it as a proxy for what is of primary interest to our retention programs and services. We need to identify the needs of students directly and assess our efforts accordingly.

Closing the College Knowledge Gap?

Although there are many measurement challenges, direct assessment will improve our ability to evaluate program impact on the knowledge, values, and behavior of FGCS students, as well as help program coordinators be more intentional in the delivery of college knowledge. The overreliance on parent education level to identify first-generation students hinders our ability to assess program impact because as an identification indicator it is indirectly associated with the deficit of interest. We need to focus directly on the gap in knowledge that impedes college success in order to improve learning, enhance program impact, and increase graduation rates. We have the resources, collaborative culture, and a clear impetus to measure the impact of support programs on graduation. Now we also need to narrow our focus on the treatment that boosts retention. Until we do, our understanding of the impact of support services will remain very limited, and our assessments will offer few recommendations for program improvement.

The best statistical techniques available are correlational, not causal. Unless we directly measure changes in knowledge and behavior, we cannot explain why certain outcomes are more or less likely. For example, a recent GEAR UP evaluation found that Nevada GEAR UP students attending the University of Nevada, Reno persisted to their sophomore year at the same rate as their peers (Sanchez, Lowman, & Hill, 2016). Evidence of the GEAR UP program’s impact was indirect at best as no program-level outcomes were included in the evaluation: Such information was simply not available. Even with advanced statistical modeling to control the influence of precollege characteristics and experiences, the results identify patterns only and explain a small portion of the variation in outcomes. That said, it is possible to increase the rigor and diligence of such an evaluation by measuring college knowledge among incoming students and assessing knowledge growth over time or retrospectively. Either method, described below, will help explain the patterns observed in retention research and give insight into causal processes underlying student development.

Value-Added assessment methods: A pre-post design is optimal to assess the value certain experiences add to knowledge. Ideally, the initial assessment would take place before students are exposed to campus services or programs; during or soon after admission, for example. All incoming students should be assessed to identify the base of knowledge for the incoming class, as well as special groups of interest such as FGCS. Next, the initial assessment of college knowledge could be used to target students in most need of support. Similarly, the initial assessment would provide programs a baseline of college knowledge from which to develop learning opportunities. Finally, FGCS learning outcomes and programmatic outcomes could be compared to non-participating FGCS students and continuing-generation students as well. Evidence of program impact would then be derived from both internal assessments (e.g., learning outcomes of participants, knowledge gains) and external comparisons to nonparticipant student groups.

Retrospective assessment methods: Retrospective assessments have been found to have comparable validity (i.e., accuracy) and reliability (i.e., consistency) for measurement of subjective experiences of program-related change (Hill & Betz, 2005; Howard et al., 1979; Lam & Bengo, 2003). To prompt students to rank and rate experiences in hindsight, instructions and questions need to be carefully worded to minimize cognitive biases to which retrospective accounts are susceptible (e.g., social desirability bias, positivity bias, correspondence bias). Retrospective assessments facilitate a more subjective account of learning, but they are no less of a direct evaluation of program outcomes. Retrospective assessments are best suited for the evaluation of learning outcomes that result from a recent experience in a program or service. They are less well-suited to the assessment of knowledge gains as time from the experience extends.

Conclusions

From a societal perspective, increasing access to college does little good if FGCS students do not get to reap the rewards of a college degree. The research is quite clear regarding the benefit of a bachelor’s degree for access to social mobility (Choy, 2001). Survey data from the Beginning Postsecondary Study revealed that first-generation status represents an acute disadvantage towards completing a degree in five years (13 versus 33 percent) or leaving without a degree (45 versus 29 percent) (Choy, 2001). However, bachelor’s degree attainment appeared to level the playing field. First-generation college students who completed a bachelor’s degree were just as likely to earn a job with a comparable salary when compared to continuing-generation bachelor degree recipients (Choy, 2001; Nunez & Cuccaro-Alamin, 1998). Likewise, three years postgraduation, salary parity remained between first-generation and continuing-generation graduates (Horn & Zahn, 2001).

Going forward we need to directly identify the college knowledge that first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students lack and target their needs explicitly. The primary benefit of this approach will be an increase both in the rigor of services and programs, as well as an opportunity to fully assess the impact of supplemental information and its delivery. A secondary benefit will be the identification of evidence-based practices that can be scaled up to increase the persistence and graduation of students not directly served. Essentially, an approach that benefits FGCS is more likely to benefit the general population than is an approach based on the needs of the general population (Arnold, Lu, & Armstrong, 2012; Conley, 2008). More rigorous assessment can help identify the college knowledge students need to succeed. More rigorous assessment can help identify bureaucratic and cultural hurdles that arise when students encounter the sheer size of our institution and its rapidly changing composition. Finally, more rigorous assessment can lift the burden of navigating college off the shoulders of students and promote access to the core learning opportunities our institution provides.

References

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Adelman, C. (2006). The toolbox revisited: Paths to degree Completions from High school through college. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

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