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  • Higher Education and First-Generation Students: Cultivating Community, Voice, and Place for the New Majority by Rashné Rustom Jehangir
  • Rachel Bonaparte, Doctoral Student
Rashné Rustom Jehangir. Higher Education and First-Generation Students: Cultivating Community, Voice, and Place for the New Majority. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 224 pp. Hardcover: $40.14. ISBN-10: 1137293233.

Rashné Jehangir courageously embarks on the journey of exploring issues pertaining to first-generation (FG) and low-income (LI) students in higher education. She brings to light various student concerns regarding identity seeking, academic integration, social integration, community building, motivation, and countless other pertinent issues affecting first-generation students who attend predominantly White universities.

In collaboration with two other faculty members, Jehangir designed a learning community that became the basis of an eight-year study examining and reflecting on the lived experiences and multiple identities of first-generation students in their first year of college and beyond. The term, “first-generation,” can be somewhat ambiguous within academic discourse. Wei, Ku, and Liao (2011) define first-generation students as minority students “who were born in another country” (p. 197). The National Center for Educational Statistics (2005) defines first-generation status as “students who are the first members of their families to attend college” (p. iii).

Conversely, Jehangir defines first-generation students as low-income students whose parents have not received a bachelor’s degree. The addition of low-income as a qualifier is distinctly different from numerous researchers that define first-generation students as individuals whose parents have no college experience (Billson & Terry, 1982, cited in Jehangir, 2010, p. 14) or parents who have not received a four-year college degree (Harackiewicz et al., 2013). The inclusion of low-income in this particular research is because “family income impacts not only graduation from high school, a precondition to college access but also impacts [student] enrollment, persistence, and completion of collegiate degrees” (Jehangir, 2010, p. 15).

Higher Education and First-Generation Students is organized in three parts: “Getting There: First-Generation Students and the Road to College,” “Being Here: Surviving the Transition to College,” and “Getting Through: Lessons from First-Generation Students.”

Part 1 challenges the often-linear view of the first-generation student experience, taking into account students’ multiple identities/roles (mother, wife, son, part-time employee, etc.), self-perception and efficacy, demographics, cultural affiliations, and family expectations, for instance. With a large demographic shift in higher education, “FG students are more likely than not to be Hispanic or Black” (p. 30), to come from low-income families, and also to be categorized as a “high-risk student” (Ishitani, 2003, p. 446).

These students are more than twice as likely to drop out of college as students whose parents have a college degree (Chen & Carrol, 2005, cited in Jehangir, 2010, p. 30). Jehangir explains, “For FG students, their worldviews are markedly different with regard to preparation for college, family roles and obligations, as well as their familiarity with campus rituals, symbols, and implicit modi operandi” (p. 31). As one result of these various worldviews and experiences, first-generation students can enhance the learning environment on campus especially if the institution helps them overcome feelings of exclusion and invisibility (p. 31). (Jehangir, 2008, as cited in Jehangir, 2010), ultimately influencing their persistence and success. [End Page 171]

These feelings, Jehangir notes, are increasingly apparent at White four-year institutions where the campus culture is based on “White, male, and middle-class norms” (p. 33). In such circumstances, first-generation students receive the message that “their cultural capital, language, and resilience are not of use” (p. 33) at that particular institution. The hegemonic norms of the university are reflected in the curricula, disregarding experiences of students of color who are also poor. These various aspects necessitate a metamorphosis of self for first-generation students to survive at that particular institution. This forcible change includes the adjustment to learn the “university way” (p. 34)—including verbal and, arguably, nonverbal language, adjusting to academic and social life despite having multiple roles (i.e., various jobs at one time), feelings of inadequacy, and adjusting to the dislocation and relocation from family role assignments. Throughout this journey, first-generation students must...

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