In the Broadway production of “In the Heights,” Nina Rosario sits on front steps of her family’s apartment and sings the painful song of first-generation college students who fell behind in the difficulties of school and dropped out.
Nina’s emotional voice rings with the pressures put on first-generation students: “I got every scholarship, saved every dollar, the first to go to college, how do I tell them why I’m coming back home?”
In 2008, incoming freshmen like the fictional Nina Rosario began self-reporting on the graduation status of their parents. For the past five years, approximately 23 percent of each freshman class was first-generation college students.
National trends would insist that these students are left behind upon arrival at the University, graduating at a lower rate than their classmates.
However, according to the latest University four-year graduation rate, first-generation students only graduate six percent less than the rate of all 2010 students (nearly 33 percent compared to 39.2 percent).
The University’s first generation graduation rate is slightly above the national average, granted the percentage is still lower than it should be both here at the University and nationally. The success of first-generation students is not a testament to the guiding hand here.
Besides a question on the admissions application and a few scholarships, the University treats first-generation college students like any other student. It essentially ignores the difficulties first-generation students typically face.
According to Marquette University’s counseling department, first-generation students typically work part-time jobs to help pay for school expenses, face a high level of family responsibilities that conflict with academic responsibilities and live at or attend a school nearby their home.
These students are more likely to suffer from culture shock and stress when entering college. Programs focused on providing academic support through tutoring, counseling and peer mentoring can help ease the transition process of the first-generation experience.
Sophomore Gold is a model student retention program that could help first generation students.
Students pair up with professors within their majors and concentrations, students participate in group activities to bring them closer together and older students mentor younger students through academic difficulties.
This program resides here at the University but does not focus on first-generation students. Students who have a parent who attended college, perform well in school and participate in multiple extracurriculars comprise Sophomore Gold.
The University should reallocate this program’s resources from sophomores in already stellar academic standing to first-generation college freshmen who need peer mentors and professors to guide them through their inaugural year in higher education.
First-generation students in 2008 competed well with their classmates, but there is no way to gauge how the roughly 6,000 first-generation students currently at the University are performing academically.
Since 2008, fees at the University have increased as a result of budget cuts and are likely to do so again. The less affordable college becomes, the more student loans increase. If student loans increase, the graduation rate for first-generation students will likely decrease.
The University last recorded its student loan default rate at an incredibly low 4.9 percent. The percentage remains low because TOPS subsidizes in-state student tuition and Federal Pell Grants help cover most, if not all, of the cost of fees.
Eventually Pell Grants won’t pay for all of the University’s fees, and the amount of students taking out loans will increase, placing first-generation students at a greater financial risk.
Our first-generation students may withstand academic hardships currently, but there is no guarantee they will fare well when those hardships are combined with increased financial difficulties as the budget continues to shrink.
Higher education has become as much of the American dream as owning a home. The University should create programs aimed at gauging first-generation students’ academic progress and guiding them through the difficulties that college life may offer, in order that these students’ American dream isn’t lost among the thousands of students under the stately oaks.
Justin DiCharia is a 20-year-old mass communication junior from Slidell, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @JDiCharia.