Guided by Voices?

New England Journal of Higher Education, The, Winter 2005 by Scurry, Jamie E

Conversations with Underrepresented Students

The University of Texas at El Paso, Community College of Denver and Valencia Community College are among the small number of colleges and universities that successfully retain and graduate firstgeneration students, students of color and low-income students at the same level as their white and more affluent classmates. These institutions offer models of how to create pathways to academic success and graduation for all students. So why do so many colleges and universities still fail-or fail to even try-to adequately serve these populations?

Part of the problem is that we have not figured out how to replicate or connect isolated successful programs to create systems that meet society's needs. Another part of the problem is that we have not sufficiently identified and removed the roadblocks that students face.

If the goal is to provide opportunity for all students to succeed, we should spend more time listening to those students who struggle to stay enrolled, navigate the system and complete their degrees. Students know best what contributes to their success-and what inhibits it.

To this end, the Futures Project conducted focus groups with students of color, first-generation college students and low-income students to hear them relate, in their own voices, how well- or ill-served they are by such factors as campus climate, finances, academic advising and outreach programs. The conversations, published in a report entitled In Their Own Voices: Conversations with College Students from Underrepresented Populations, brought the discussion about higher education access and attainment from the theory-based level where it is usually carried on, back down to earth-focused solely on what students had to say. One cannot hear these students' stories and still believe that we are doing all we can to ensure that all students have a real opportunity to complete college.

Take Krystle, a soft-spoken single mother of two and the first of nine children to attend college. Krystle dropped out of high school and years later earned her GED. Decades later, Krystle summoned the courage to enroll in her local community college, hoping to make her sons proud. Krystle is employed full-time and has simultaneously been working to achieve her degree on a part-time basis for the last seven years. Krystle's oldest son was recently killed. As a result, her younger son suffers from clinical depression so severe that he requires around-the-clock care. Balancing work, school, her son and her grief is not easy. During a recent followup call, Krystle explained that she had to drop out of school this past fall. She could no longer balance it all on her own. Krystle's encounters with her college made it almost impossible for her to complete her degree.

"My son was killed and I was having problems dealing with it all. I couldn't focus on my course but I did not want to drop it because I had put so much work into it. I went to talk with my professor. He told me to drop it. He never told me I could take an 'incomplete.' I had to pay for and take the whole course over again."

-Krystle, first-generation student, single mother

Other students might not face problems as difficult as Krystle's, but the institutional barriers they face impede their progress just the same. Consider a few of their experiences:

"I have been attending [local community college] for seven years. Every semester, they lose my GED certificate and every semester, I have to bring it to them again. I must use my lunch hour to take care of it. Most times, I end up waiting more than an hour."

-Ana, first-generation student, single mother

"The financial aid office and the whole process is so difficult. I always have to pay first and wait for my aid to arrive. It is hard because most of the time I don't have the money up front."

-Sandra, first-generation student, single mother

It's not just students at two-year institutions that face barriers along the road to completion. Students from four-year public and private institutions do as well. Consider:

"I had an advisor my freshman year ... but this man would not talk to me. He basically fulfilled the responsibility of signing my paper when I wanted to change my classes and handed it back to me without saying anything to me. ... I am on my fourth major now and it is kind of frustrating to look for an advisor wherever you go."

-James, first-generation student

"If you are not of a certain ethnicity or have a certain tone, if you come with the braids, the baggy jeans, you get shoved aside. You don't get much attention, you are not called on as frequently to participate in class discussions."

-Miguel, second-generation student

"Being a woman of color ... I am constantly seen as an example of a Latina succeeding or an example of a Latina not succeeding. I have definitely had moments in class where ... I want to be making a point or an opinion as another student in the class, but people will be assigning different meanings that I don't want them to at the time because you are seeing me as something else first."