The Journey Before Us

First-Generation Pathways from Middle School to College

Laura Nichols

• Editorial: Rutgers University Press
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781978805644
• Categoría: Pedagogía
• Categoría: Educación general

More students are enrolling in college than ever before in U.S. history. Yet, many never graduate. In The Journey Before Us, Laura Nichols examines why this is by sharing the experiences of aspiring first-generation college students as they move from middle-school to young adulthood. By following the educational trajectories and transitions of Latinx, mainly second-generation immigrant students and analyzing national data, Nichols explores the different paths that students take and the factors that make a difference. The interconnected role of schools, neighborhoods, policy, employment, advocates, identity, social class, and family reveal what must change to address the "college completion crisis." Appropriate for anyone wanting to understand their own educational journey as well as students, teachers, counselors, school administrators, scholars, and policymakers, The Journey Before Us outlines what is needed so that education can once again be a means of social mobility for those who would be the first in their families to graduate from college.

1

Paths Diverged

Student Outcomes by College Generational Status

My parents didn’t go to college. I have no idea what it’s like, I have no idea academically what it’s going to be like. And then there is a bunch of other kids whose parents did go to college, they’ve been preparing for it for their whole lives.

—Gloria

It is December of Sarah’s senior year of high school and she has just finished submitting her eleven college applications, crossing her fingers that she will be admitted to most of them and know better which one she wants to attend when she has to decide in the spring. Now she can go back to enjoying her senior year of high school. Isabel, a classmate of Sarah’s, has seen the flyers and emails from school counselors about college workshops and visits but has not had time to attend most of them. Besides her schoolwork, she is working at the local amusement park, helping her single mother paint houses on the weekends, driving her younger siblings to school, and completing her required school volunteer hours to keep her private high school tuition low. As Isabel is the oldest child, her mom, sister, and brothers are very excited about her being the first in her family to graduate high school in the United States. When asked what she will do once she graduates, she says that she wants to go to college. But she knows it will be expensive and that her mom relies on her to help with her siblings as well as keep her business going.

Sarah and Isabel are both seniors and attend the same college-prep high school, St. Theresa Catholic, where most of the students graduate in four years and attend college as full-time students the following fall. But Sarah and Isabel came to St. Theresa via two different routes. And although they had access to the same resources at their high school, had similar grade point averages, and, with the support of their families, had desired to attend college since they were children, their paths to and within college are very different, with Sarah having a high likelihood of obtaining a bachelor’s degree in four years and Isabel much less likely to graduate, even in six years. Why?

To increase rates of college graduation, we need to understand how current college-going paths support some students and not others. The purpose of this book is to show, through the experiences of students and young adults who are the first in their families to navigate the U.S. education system, the paths they take starting in middle school and the resources they need to transition their families from first-generation to families with college backgrounds.

To do this we will learn from the educational journeys of students who all attended Saint Middle School and aspired to attend college. Each chapter begins by outlining the experience of one Saint alum—Samuel, Isabel, Alex, Veronica, or Ali—and adds further detail from the experiences of other Saint alum. Chapter 2 includes information about what is known already about schools and educational success based on the educational background of parents. Chapter 3 covers the experiences of Saint alumni in middle and high school. Chapter 4 shows the different paths that Saint alumni took post–high school. Each of the paths has something to teach us about what needs to improve if a greater number of aspiring students who want to be the first in their families to attend college are to realize their goals. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss the main themes revealed in the experiences of students over their educational trajectories and what can be done to improve the experiences and outcomes of prospective first-generation college students.

All of the students profiled in this book started at public elementary schools in a low-income urban neighborhood in California, then attended Saint, a private, Catholic middle school designed to provide educational options for low-income, mostly second-generation immigrant students in the United States, then moved on to a mix of traditional public, charter, and private high schools, and finally followed one of five different paths post–high school. Their experiences, both when they were prospective college students in middle and high school and later as they attempted to attend college, show the importance of understanding that moving through the education system in the United States is a journey that needs to accommodate many different pathways. Further, by focusing on transitions we can see what changes are necessary so more students graduate.

There were five factors that high-achieving students who would be the first in their families to attend college needed to enroll and ultimately graduate with a bachelor’s degree: (1) actively being put on the path to college early on one’s educational trajectory and receiving certification and recertification of belonging on the path by schools at every transitional stage; (2) access and opportunities to attend quality schools and colleges with good rates of graduating students; (3) assistance from trusted individuals with the know-how to navigate the different systems that students encounter on the path to college, especially when transitioning to different schools; (4) economically stable families, and (5) the ability to balance work and school.

The rest of this chapter provides background information on the growing importance of degree attainment in the United States and what is known about the influence of parents’ educational background on students’ educational trajectories. These areas are explored using an ecological systems approach to understand the full context of students’ lives and how their journeys are intertwined with their families, schools, neighborhoods, and social policies.

The Growth and Stagnation of Educational Attainment in the United States

The educational backgrounds of adults in the United States have risen over time, and rates of high school graduation are increasing. As we can see in figure 1.1, in 1940 only 20 percent of the adult population had a high school degree, but now the rate is close to 60 percent. And the proportion of adults with a bachelor’s degree is also growing, although at a slower pace. However, some of that increase is the result of immigration policies that have led to the recruitment of already educated adults to join the U.S. workforce. For most adults in the United States, their highest level of education is high school or less (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES] 2018a, 2019).¹ But the necessity of postsecondary training for jobs of the future, especially in tight labor markets, is growing, with a particular need for those with bachelor’s degrees (Carnevale and Smith 2018).

FIGURE 1.1. Percentage of Population Twenty-Five and Older by Education Level, 1940−2017. Data and figure design from U.S. Census Bureau, 2018.

This book shows that the meritocratic system of education and hard work, which propelled many baby boomers (parents and grandparents of current young adults) into the middle class, is not working in the same ways because structures of opportunity have changed. It also chronicles the slow progression of inequality that has existed for families with few economic resources for many generations but is now also negatively influencing those in the middle class. Paradoxically, those same parents and grandparents who worked hard and were the first in their families to attend college between the 1960s and the 1990s are the ones hoarding the very uneven educational resources that exist for children in the educational pipeline today.

Millennials, those born between 1980 and 2000, are the first generation to be worse off economically than their parents at the same age (Taylor 2014). And income inequality between the generations is vastly different. In 1984 those sixty-five and older had ten times the net worth of those under thirty-five; by 2011 that difference was twenty-six times. This despite the overall higher levels of education of young adults compared to their parents and grandparents. These differences between the generations have policy implications. The largest voting bloc in the United States, baby boomers, grew up at a time of great expansion of both public and private educational institutions as well as public financial support for college, even during the Great Depression of the 1930s (Mettler 2014). Those who benefitted from these increasing opportunities often see only their hard work as explanations for their success. Hard work is still extremely necessary, but there also must be opportunities to put that hard work toward something that is a valued good in society. Traditionally that opportunity has been found in education, and many generations of adults in the United States, including those from immigrant families, have found social mobility in one or two generations via hard work and success in the education system.

FIGURE 1.2. Median Annual Earnings of Full-Time Year-Round Workers Twenty-Five to Thirty-Four Years Old by Educational Attainment, 1995–2017 (in constant 2017 dollars). Data from NCES, 2018b.

Some argue that attainment of a bachelor’s degree is not necessary for everyone. But with the increasing credentialization of our society, and as figure 1.2 shows, earnings of those with bachelor’s or graduate degrees have consistently been higher than wages for those with only some college. Earnings with an associate’s degree, usually a two-year degree, are only marginally better than those with a high school degree. Postsecondary education, especially a bachelor’s degree, is now necessary to attain a middle-class lifestyle, and more jobs are requiring such credentials (Carnevale and Strohl 2010). This means that a collaborative effort is needed between state and federal government, higher education, and the private sector to figure out how to ensure that more students whose parents do not have a college degree go to college. These aspiring first-generation college students are the focus of this book.

First-Generation College Studen...