The importance of college enrollment has surged as degrees have increasingly become prerequisites for employment. While enrollment numbers have risen, rates of attendance among all populations have not been equal. Low income and first-generation students enroll and complete college at lower rates than their counterparts.
Conducted during a psychology-based high school curriculum intervention, designed to increase underrepresented students’ likelihood of successful college completion, this qualitative inquiry used methods of grounded theory to provide insights into persisting inequalities in educational attainment. The study focused on potentially college-bound students’ aspirations, perceptions and views of their educational landscape with the aim to increase understanding of the academic attainment challenges some students from high poverty high schools face.
Two themes, emerging from grounded theory methods of analysis, combined together to form students’ view of college: students’ home context and resource scarcity during the college enrollment process. Central to students’ views of postsecondary education was the perception of college as risky. Risk was the product of college being perceived as unfamiliar, academically hard, and expensive when confronted with resource scarcity. College-bound students became involved in numerous strategies designed to reduce the risk college attendance presented. These strategies, while helping students in the short term, involved activities associated with non-completion of four-year degrees, such as beginning their postsecondary pursuits at two-year colleges and for-profit institutions. Not all students attempted risk minimizing strategies. Other plans included forgoing college altogether. Among other reasons, students may not pursue four-year degrees because they do not share the belief in the promise of economic security a college degree claims to afford.
Findings revealed that there are six “secret ingredients” to postsecondary baccalaureate attainment, which go beyond the traditionally viewed requirements of “skill and will.” Academic attainment depends upon resources of wealth, time, knowledge, courage and the abilities to make sacrifices and to take risks. Better understanding of hidden ingredients to college success viewed from students’ perspectives has the potential to improve policy decisions aimed at increasing access to educational opportunities.