Wednesday, November 4, 2015 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, November 4, 2015 // The Statement
5B
Faces of an invisible identity:
First-generation student experiences
G
rowing up on the west side of Detroit, most of Katie
Thomas’ high school classmates didn’t go to college.
But the Kinesiology senior was a stellar student: she
consistently earned As in her classes, and she enjoyed going to
school. So when she applied to college, the University of Michi-
gan seemed like a natural choice.
But Thomas didn’t expect to feel so out of place at the Uni-
versity.
“I knew that coming here was going to be hard,” she said.
“But it was really hard. I didn’t make any friends until sopho-
more year. I was here by myself and didn’t have any friends.”
Thomas is a first-generation college student. Neither of her
parents went to college, and Thomas says this identity has had
a huge impact on her experience at the University.
“If you have parents who went to college, you have some
idea of what to expect,” she said. “I wasn’t aware. Everything I
came to here was new to me.”
According to the 2015 enrollment report, about 8.6 percent
of current freshman are first-generation college students. This
represents a decline of freshman from about 13 percent in 2010
and about 11 percent in 2014.
These are the children of food service workers, farmers,
mailmen, and electricians. Many are from Michigan, but some
travel from distant corners of the country. Many are working-
class and low-income, according to experts interviewed for
this article, but first-generation students can also come from
higher income families.
First-generation students cross boundaries of race, class,
sexuality, and economics. These are their stories.
***
Thomas went to a charter high school in Dearborn, Mich.,
near her neighborhood in Detroit. Only one-third of her class-
mates went to college, she said — but she estimated that half of
them have since dropped out. In high school, she studied hard,
but good grades came easily to her. In college, it was different.
“I didn’t understand what hard meant,” she said. “Hard to
me was an exam that was tough, not that you have an exam, a
paper and a project all due within 24 hours. It was physically
hard, having to keep up on all of the work, but also mentally
hard. I was here all by myself, no friends, no family, and I had
to try and do it on my own.”
Most of her friends growing up didn’t even see college as an
option, Thomas said .
“A lot of people I went to school with thought more about
the quickest way to get money,” she said. “They thought that
college was just a distraction, and they could make money by
working at one of the plants, or somewhere else. They’d rather
get their six-week license to be a CNA (certified nursing assis-
tant) instead of actually going to school to get a degree and be
a nurse.”
Public Policy graduate student Cortney Sanders shares
many of the same experiences as Thomas. A Black woman
from a working-class, low-income neighborhood in Houston,
Texas, Sanders was valedictorian of her high school class and
went on to the UT Austin for her bachelor’s degree.
“I think that’s the journey for most first-gens,” she said.
“They come from a neighborhood that’s poverty-stricken,
and the high school is filled with people who come from low
income or disadvantaged backgrounds, and they are valedic-
torian, salutatorian, top five percent because of the neighbor-
hood they came from.”
Sanders says she grew up in a safe and friendly neighbor-
hood, but she doesn’t remember any of her friends growing up
actually attending college. Attending a university even a few
hours away was something unprecedented for her family.
She received a full-ride scholarship to attend the UT Aus-
tin through a program that offers scholarships to low-income
and underrepresented students. Otherwise, attending college
might have been unaffordable.
“Some people have different ideas about college,” she said.
“They think it’s a rip-off, or you’re going to be spending your
entire life paying it off. It really depends on what people’s par-
ents told them.”
Though only one of Sanders’ sisters attended a four-year
college, her parents were adamant that she and her siblings
pursue at least some form of higher education. Thomas said
her parents are huge proponents of education, too — they
wanted their kids to have better lives. Her parents emphasized
academics above everything else.
“They didn’t require us to do a lot of chores and stuff at home
because they wanted to make sure that we stayed focused on
the main goals: school and academics as well as extracurricu-
lars,” Thomas said. “As long as we did well in school, that was
the main focus.”
Sanders said her identities as a Black woman and a first-gen-
eration student are very intertwined.
“In my family, I’m three generations away from slavery,” she
said. “Generations of my family did not have the option to go to
college. Someone else who could be literally sitting next to me
in class never had that experience. It’s not just about the choice
that was made, but the system that was created for me and my
personal identities.”
Thomas is biracial. She’s from an area that’s predominantly
Black, so being in a place with so many white people was very
different for her.
“Coming here, where the percentage of African-American
people is fairly small, was different to me,” she said. “I wasn’t
used to being around so many white people, which is kind of
crazy.”
Thomas is president of First Generation College Students at
Michigan — a group she says has helped her feel welcome at
the University.
The group began with a few students in 2008 and has since
grown to include a variety of social activities, resources, and
events. They host weekly meetings, dinners every semester,
and a special graduation ceremony in May.
Sociology lecturer Dwight Lang is one of two advisers of the
group. The other is Greg Merrit, a senior associate director for
housing. Both were first-generation college students, too. Lang
said these students face a certain set of challenges, but they
often share common strengths.
“They were the cream of the crop at their high school,” he
said. “I think one of their biggest struggles is learning how to
ask for help, because they have been self-sustaining for most
of high school.”
Lang said being first-gen at the University, especially if a
student is also low-income, can be a challenge because stu-
dents are generally put in an environment completely differ-
ent from their hometown.
“They are changing, while the rest of their families are
oftentimes staying in the lower class,” he said. “You’re going
back and forth for the rest of my life. I’ve experienced that,
because I was also the first in my family to go to college. I felt
like I was always going back and forth between my old world
and my new world.”
Lang added that because the first-generation identity is
often closely tied to being low-income, this makes the identity
different than, say, racial identities.
“If you’re working class, you’re going to become middle
class when you come here and you graduate,” he said. “If
you’re Black, you’re going to be Black until the day you die.”
Students of color have access to resources like the Trotter
Multicultural Center and the Office of Multicultural Student
Affairs. But before the First Generation Students at Michigan
group was founded in 2008, there wasn’t a place on campus for
white first-gens.
“Based on the research I read, many first-gen students end
up being loners because they feel so detached on campuses
like this,” he said. “I’ve talked to so many first-gens who’ve
seriously thought about leaving even into their sophomore
year, because they felt so out of place.”
Lang also emphasized that the first-generation identity
can transcend boundaries of race, class and more. Some high-
income students are the first in their families to go to college,
and some low-income students are continuing-generation stu-
dents, a term describing students whose parents graduated
from college.
Take Logan Meyer, a School of Information junior and vice
president of First Generation College Students at Michigan.
Though he’s a first-generation student, he comes from a well-
off family, which has complicated this identity.
“When people are talking about stressors I would never
experience, it’s hard to consider the issues I’m having,” he
said. “I almost shouldn’t be in this space. Do my problems even
compare to those who don’t have the privileges I have?”
Meyer’s mother works for their rural Illinois county, and
his father is an electrician. They also partially own a family
farming business, and while they aren’t wealthy, they have
never struggled with money. Meyer said his first-gen identity
is often overlooked.
“I struggled a lot my first year, especially academically,” he
said. “I hated it. I felt alone. I came here with no one. No one
reached out to me, because I looked like every other continu-
ing-gen student.”
Meyer’s parents pay for his college tuition, but he said
doesn’t mean they understood what he was going through. He
said there was a huge disconnect between him and his par-
ents, and between him and his friends from home, too. No one
understood why he was going to an out-of-state school. Most
of his high school classmates thought it was a waste of money.
Thomas and Meyer both said being a part of the student
group has helped them realize that there are other people
going through similar experiences.
“I realized, I’m not the only one here who feels this way,”
Thomas said. “Going to the meetings and realizing that there
are other people who are also struggling and have the same
issues and concerns as me was also an eye opener. And that’s
why I started to feel like I had a place and I belonged.”
Thomas is proud to be a first-generation college student. It’s
something with which she identifies very strongly.
“We set trends,” she said. “We are trailblazers. I am a leader
and I will be a leader of my family for generations to come, and
I don’t think that’s anything that should be looked down upon
or seen as a barrier.”
***
Statistics on first-generation students at the University
come from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program
entering student survey. It’s a national survey of new full-time
undergraduate students that’s administered by the Univer-
sity’s office of student life. Generally, 75 to 80 percent of new
students take the survey. Numbers of first generation fresh-
men have shifted over the past few years but generally hover
around 10 percent.
At other top schools, numbers are similar, or higher. At
Princeton, 12 percent of students are first-generation college
students. At Yale, it’s 14 percent, and 17 percent at Brown.
Among the lowest is Washington University at St. Louis, with
only 8 percent first-generation students.
Sandra Levitsky, an assistant professor of sociology, is cur-
rently leading an effort to aggregate results of several differ-
ent research studies on first-generation students. Levitsky said
first-gen students at the University face particular challenges
because there are so few of them.
“If you go to a community college the numbers will be 60,
70, 80 percent first generation students, you don’t have that
sense of isolation because there are a huge number of people
going through the same experience as you are,” she said. “But
when you arrive at an elite university like Michigan, most peo-
ple aren’t experiencing this sort of trauma of upward mobility.
You feel like you are the only one. That sense of isolation makes
the experience of college much more difficult.”
For example, the percentage of first-generation students at
the University pales in comparison to nearby Eastern Michi-
gan University: in fall 2011, 33 percent of new first year stu-
dents were the first in their families to attend college.
Levitsky became interested in studying first-gens because
her dad was one. Growing up, he talked about his college expe-
rience a lot. As a professor, she mentors many first-gen stu-
dents. She said the challenges that these students encounter
are unique.
“All of these challenges make the experience of being here
very isolating, very challenging, and very demoralizing,” she
said. “And so you see a higher dropout rate, or a just sort of
a really hard experience for four years, sometimes five years,
where other students are, you know, this is the best time of
their life.”
Levitsky emphasized that first-generation students have a
lot of unique qualities. They might not have the cultural capi-
tal of a continuing generation student, but, she said, they tend
to be hard-working and persistent, and they oftentimes have
overcome a lot to be where they are.
“If a student arrives at a top research university such as the
University of Michigan, coming as the first in their family to
go to a four-year college, they have a certain level of grit, skills,
persistence usually equated with future leaders,” she said.
“These are great students.”
In September 2015, University President Mark Schlissel
announced a new initiative to increase diversity on campus.
He described ongoing programs to address inclusion and
diversity, and programs that will be put in place over the next
year to reach out to students with incomplete applications
and do more outreach to students who are admitted but not
yet enrolled. These initiatives also target students from low-
socioeconomic backgrounds.
Levitsky hopes to use results of the project to propose pro-
grams for first-generation students that may be piloted in the
sociology department. As the University becomes increasingly
diverse, she says, these programs will become more and more
necessary.
“One of the things I find so striking is that in a University
like Michigan, even though we know this about the obstacles
that first gen students face, we still throw everyone together in
the classroom and into the program as if they were starting at
an equal starting line,” she said.
by Carolyn Gearig, Special Projects Manager
LUNA ANNA ARCHEY/Daily
Public Policy master’s student Cortney Sanders is pictured here at Munger Graduate Residences, where she
is a Coleman Munger Fellow.
LUNA ANNA ARCHEY/Daily
Sociology lecturer Dwight Lang and Greg Merritt, senior associate director of housing, advise the First Gen-
eration College Students at Michigan group. They were both first-generation college students.
LUNA ANNA ARCHEY/Daily
School of Information junior Logan Meyer spends most of his time in North Quad.
LUNA ANNA ARCHEY/Daily
Kinesiology senior Katie Thomas practices with her dance team, Dalliance Dance Crew.