American Community Voices: Familial and Collegiate

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Royka would help me with my homework. Now I go in for Calculus. And even if my regular teacher is out, the Physics teacher takes time to help me. First-generation Hispanic students wrestled with issues Anglo college students never usually confront. More confident now of her direction, a couple of issues still nagged at her. Recently, he persuaded her to attend a Hispanic themed conference in Chicago, an experience that proved exhilarating. They said each of us could make a real difference in the world.

I decided to come here today because I believe talking to you will make me a better person. Perhaps talking to me will make you a better person, too. For example, Hispanic students tended to drop in and out depending on the personal, familial, or financial issues they were grappling with at the time. Taught to refuse loans and avoid debt, students would stop out, work long enough to pay for another semester, and then reenroll. Kansas Board of Regents policy wanted students out in 2 years or less, but an academic advisor quickly disabused us of that notion.

It makes no difference what Topeka [the state capitol] wants because BCCC is right here in their back yard. Students know if they keep plugging away a few credit hours a semester for three, four, or five years, they will eventually get their degree. It was an exhausting cycle and staffers spent hours every week persuading students to stick it out until the end of the semester or persevere until they completed their degree or program requirements.

Stop and start enrollment patterns seemed connected to the kinds of personal issues students grappled with such as inner resourcefulness, autonomy, and self-worth. To illustrate, an advising coordinator shared a story about Rosa:. Six days a week, her mother would leave early for work at Rangeland Beef. She would wake her sister in the morning, feed her breakfast, help fix her clothes and hair, walk with her to school and make sure she got home after school let out.

Now 17, Rosa continues to co-parent her sister even while in college. This routine is all she has ever known. Students such as Rosa, with working parents, typically assumed caretaking responsibility for younger siblings, duties that took priority over college. Where the clash of family loyalty, aspirations for socioeconomic mobility, and pressure to assimilate into U. Amid the incessant give and take that characterized student lives, the bottom line was rarely in doubt: Family took precedence over other considerations.

For example, Tomas abandoned plans to major in biomedical engineering at Boston University.

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His single mother worked the night shift and barely scraped by raising three sons by herself. Tomas had looked after his brothers since the age of 14, picking them up after school and taking care of their needs. Not long ago, his youngest brother became ill and required round-the-clock homecare. With no health insurance and medical bills piling up, Tomas could not, in good conscience, leave his mother to manage on her own. His decision to help care for his brother meant enrolling in Oklahoma Panhandle State University and commuting between Goodwell and Winstead.

But over time, the wear and tear became too much. The hardships endured by parents on the migration trek from Mexico to the United States and their experiences working in the lowest echelons of the labor market had an analogue in the passage their children were making through the least prestigious tiers of the U. Hispanic students were not keen on disrespecting their parents but they were determined to follow occupational pathways that led them to grander destinations than the front gates of Rangeland Beef. Sofia epitomized this quest.

Her parents migrated from Mexico to California to work as field hands in the Central Valley. The family came to Winstead after an aunt informed her father about job openings at Rangeland Beef. She was indebted to her parents for getting her this far and felt obligated to repay them:. My parents came to Winstead because they wanted me to have a better life. An education was pretty much all they could afford to give me and they sacrificed everything so I could go to school. I want them to be proud of me and now that they are getting older, I want a diploma so I can be in a good position to help them out.

At one point during high school, restless to break away from Winstead, Isabella spent a summer in Mexico in the town where her parents grew up. She enjoyed visiting the ancestral home, touring the places that held special meaning for her parents. Her first flirtation with adult independence, the trip exceeded expectations. Isabella returned with indelible memories and the realization that family was more durable than place.

Places came and went, she thought, whereas family is what a person comes back to. In fact, she had begun to wonder whether family was the only reliable anchor for Hispanic immigrants destined to drift from place to place in search of work and a stable home life. At the time we spoke, Isabella was busily figuring out her place in the world and how education fit into the picture. Returning to Winstead with a skill or a degree made it less stressful for students to contemplate departure. The idea of relinquishing the material and emotional comforts of family, friends, and community was difficult for students to accept when they had yet to forge any meaningful attachments to the nebulous destinations where they will eventually land.

Anticipating that moment of separation, Amanda was already distancing herself from the raft of experiences and relationships she would walk away from to find her place in life. Daniel received cautionary advice similar to what Amanda grew up hearing. Like Daniel and Amanda, Sofia was resigned to pursuing education and career wherever opportunity took her. However, belief in the possibility of coming home to Winstead softened her acquiescence.

The thought of settling down here one day buoyed her spirits. Jorge also intended to come back, degree proudly in hand. Hispanic immigrants have been quietly altering the social and economic landscape of Winstead for more than 30 years. Yet, for the children of these immigrants, college attendance is a relatively recent phenomenon. Community colleges occupy an increasingly conspicuous place in the provision of U. For the first-generation Hispanic youth entering adulthood in Winstead, academic undermatch is an arcane concept because BCCC is likely to be their first and only experience with college life.

Academic undermatch is a judgment made of others without their assent. Our findings suggest that defining academic undermatch by the technical components of college choice and attendance such as test scores, financial aid, institutional prestige, utility maximization, and positional advantage omits critical aspects of the lives of first-generation rural Hispanic students who make college going a more arduous and ambiguous undertaking than one prioritizing status and selectivity.

Conversations with students, faculty, and staff highlighted the dangers of divorcing postsecondary matriculation decisions and academic trajectories from the trappings of first-generation, rural Hispanic student lives. Not until we looked past conventional measures of undermatch theory did we appreciate the extent to which context mattered and how student rationales for attending BCCC presented the appearance of undermatching without actually being undermatching.

If it were fair to assess the college-going decisions of first-generation, rural Hispanic students by the same or similar criteria used to assess the college-going decisions of mainstream students living in metropolitan areas, academic undermatch would constitute a more compelling theory. But as we discovered, interpreting the enrollment decisions of rural Hispanic students in isolation of the social, cultural, economic, and geographical factors mediating such decisions strips away the layers of complexity that inform their choices.

The students in our study overwhelmingly attended BCCC for reasons having to do with fit. Students experience college on both a personal and social level Nora, Within this sprawling context, college fit recognizes what undermatching glosses over—the cumulative interactions of academic and non-academic factors on whether and where students decide to go to college. Our analysis suggests that in a different place and under different circumstances, the rural Hispanic college students in our sample might have chosen to attend a more selective college than BCCC.

Had our students not had their hands full negotiating simultaneous demands placed upon them by family, work, and school, they might have pursued alternative postsecondary pathways. But in light of such demands and given the parameters of choice they confronted, students could not imagine themselves willfully taking on the challenges of a more competitive school in a strange location far removed from supportive networks of family and friends.

Rather than viewing first-generation rural Hispanic college students as unwitting victims of poor college-going decisions Bowen et al. Given the emotional load pressing down on students, we understand why college selectivity was not their top priority. We observed several features that distinguish the postsecondary topography of first-generation, rural Hispanic college students from that of mainstream college students.

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As nontraditional students historically marginalized in U. Students at BCCC indicated they would be decidedly less receptive to the entreaties of higher education if schooling required them to forsake who they were as persons. BCCC encouraged Hispanic students to maintain their distinctive ethnic identities while developing skills aimed at fostering success in college and later life.

For Hispanic immigrant students with vivid memories of dislocation, Winstead was associated with home because it was where their parents chose to stop and raise a family. Because BCCC demonstrated a commitment to advancing the well-being of Hispanic students and families, students did not believe they were squandering their talent by spending one or more years at the college. On the contrary, they lauded BCCC for giving them a personalized postsecondary experience unavailable at other Kansas institutions they knew about. Nunez, Sparks, and Hernandez recently questioned whether college choice theories sufficiently address the influence of non-academic and non-financial factors.

Our findings affirm the cogency of this concern. Because familismo elevates family needs above individual needs, it occupies a prominent place as a forceful and contested construct in the lives of Hispanic college students.

Rural communities typically require a long residential tenure before granting insider status to newcomers. The effect of diffidence on student academic performance raises additional doubts about equating enrollment in BCCC with undermatching. If enrollment at BCCC is only masquerading as undermatching, then perhaps it is more accurate to think of BCCC as a provisional step for rural Hispanic students wanting to try out college before untethering themselves from family and friends and venturing forth on their own.

Continuing-generation students socialized into familiar Anglo-American values customarily experience the transition from home to college as a laudable step toward independence. If the prevailing educational values promulgated by academic undermatch erode the vigor of Hispanic epistemologies, and success in U. A national policy aimed at improving college fit should support rural Hispanic students to achieve better results in the postsecondary institutions they are most likely to attend—rural community colleges.

He received his Ph. His research focuses on the in-school and out-of-school factors that shape the educational and socioeconomic trajectories of under-represented students in rural locations as well as issues related to the viability of rural communities themselves. Skip to main content. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education. Vol 16, Issue 1, pp. Download Citation If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice.

Via Email All fields are required. Send me a copy Cancel. Request Permissions View permissions information for this article. Article first published online: February 17, ; Issue published: English Spanish; Castilian This study examines the relationship between academic undermatch theory and the college-going decisions, experiences, and aspirations of first-generation, rural Hispanic community college students in the new destination meatpacking town of Winstead, Kansas.

Keywords Hispanic , community college , rural , academic undermatch , ethnographic.

Diversion Versus Democratization Section:. Field Sites and Method Section:. Academic Support and Personalization. Family Systems, Educational Dilemmas. Vol 16, Issue 1, Tips on citation download. The impact of community college attendance on baccalaureate attainment. Research in Higher Education, 47, - Assessing the mismatch hypothesis: Differences in college graduation rates by institutional selectivity. Sociology of Education, 78, - American Association of Community Colleges.

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Status and trends in the education of racial and ethnic groups. Conceptual and methodological problems in research on college undermatch. Educational Researcher, 43, 93 - The benefits of education for individuals and society. Realizing student success at Hispanic-serving institutions. New Directions for Community Colleges, , 35 - Google Scholar , Crossref.

Why have college completion rates declined? An analysis of changing student preparation and collegiate sources. Applied Economics, 2, - Google Scholar , Crossref , Medline.

Diversion or Democratization

A social critique of the judgment of taste. Crossing the finish line: Thematic analysis and code development. The community college effect revisited: Does it pay to attend an elite private college? Cross-cohort evidence on the effects of college type on earnings. The Journal of Human Resources, 34, - Community colleges and the promise of educational opportunity in America, Community college student success: What institutional characteristics make a difference?

Economics of Education Review, 27 6 , - How higher education reinforces the intergenerational reproduction of white racial privilege. Hollowing out the middle: The rural brain drain and what it means for America. The comprehensive mission of rural community colleges. New Directions for Community Colleges, 90, 9 - Understanding the role of parents and siblings as information sources in the college choice process of Chicana students.

Journal of College Student Development, 47, 87 - Bridging the higher education divide: Strengthening community colleges and restoring the American dream. The irony of schooling in a coastal community. Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada: A comprehensive introduction pp. D eterminants of the match between student ability and college quality.

The conflicting origins, impacts, and futures of the community college. State University of New York Press.

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Economics of Education Review, 28, - Community colleges and educational attainment: Revisiting evidence from the states. The good daughter dilemma: Latinas managing family and school demands. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 9, - Selectivity and the college experience: How undermatching shapes the college experience among high-achieving students.

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