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Reviewed by:
  • Recognizing and Serving Low-Income Students in Higher Educations: An Examination of Institutional Policies, Practices, and Culture ed. by Adrianna Kezar
  • Don Hossler
Adrianna Kezar (Ed.). Recognizing and Serving Low-Income Students in Higher Educations: An Examination of Institutional Policies, Practices, and Culture. New York: Rutledge, 2011. 266 pp. Paper: $49.95. ISBN 13: 978-0-415-80322-9.

In this interesting volume, Adrianna Kezar and her contributors set out to examine how institutional policies, practices, and culture influence postsecondary matriculation, success, and graduation among low-income students. However, Kezar and her contributors seek to go beyond exploring these topics with reviews of relevant research; the goal of this edited volume is also to examine a range of relevant topics through the lens of poststructural theory.

Poststructural theory, as opposed to structural analyses, assumes that low-income students operate from a deficit perspective that institutions need to address through targeted support programs for them. Kezar's volume has the stated goal of examining a wide range of topics that address issues of access, academic success, and college graduation from a poststructural perspective. In the opening chapter, she notes that the chapters in this edited volume offer recommendations for changing post-secondary institutions to make them more hospitable environments for low-income students. The volume comprises 13 chapters by a distinguished set of contributors who cover topics ranging from postsecondary access (matriculation), student college choice, public and institutional financial aid policies and practices, providing financial literacy and financial aid information for low-income students, student transfer and articulation policies, transitions to graduate education, and an examination of minority-serving institutions.

In this review, I want to acknowledge from the outset that I have approached this volume from three perspectives. I do this for two reasons. First, I have spent my entire career in postsecondary education, straddling the divide between research and practice. Too often scholars produce research and scholarly publications in an applied field—higher education—that speaks primarily to other scholars. The result is that they either pay little attention to the implications of their work for the world of public and/or institutional policy and practice, or else they offer recommendations that are unrealistic for campuses buffeted with declining resources, higher levels of accountability from public policymakers and accrediting bodies, and changing demographic trends.

My second reason is that, at the same time, too many college and university administrators start with the assumption that their institutions are organized effectively to provide optimal student experiences; if students encounter problems, it is up to students (with assistance from university personnel) to alter their approaches so that they can be more successful. My review examines this volume from two perspectives.

1. The utility of this volume for institutional practitioners in informing them about useful research that can help them better understand the needs of low-income students and thus serve them better.

2. The relative success of the authors in examining the topics they cover in each chapter from a poststructural theory perspective and the extent to which the authors succeed in raising thoughtful questions for further research from a poststructural point of view.

Viewed from the first perspective, Kezar and colleagues have done an excellent job of pulling [End Page 117] together a set of chapters that college and university administrators will find useful as a resource book for individuals who are responsible for institutional efforts to enhance matriculation, retention, and graduation. In the first chapter Kezar provides a nice introduction of poststructural theory for a practitioner audience that may not be well versed in the conceptual frameworks employed by post-structural theorists.

She is especially effective in her effort to get campus administrators to consider the possibility that the difficulties low-income students encounter in postsecondary education might be the result, not of deficits in the educational and social background of low-income students, but rather deficits in our postsecondary institutions. The very act of drawing campus policymakers' attention to what might need to be changed at the institution, rather than targeted programs for low-income students is a useful perspective that challenges the conventional ways in which many college and university administrators view the needs of low...

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