<p> First-generation, low-income, and disabled college students are an increasing population (Tinto, 2012). TRIO Student Support Services (SSS) is an academic support program funded by the U.S. Department of Education that seeks to support this demographic to overcome challenges and thrive while in college (Coffman, 2011). Utilizing a mixed methods approach, the goal of this study was to examine the student success outcomes of retention and grade point average of TRIO SSS students compared to students who are similarly qualified but not being served by TRIO SSS at a Midwestern, large, public, four-year institution. In addition, TRIO SSS seniors were interviewed during focus groups. During focus groups, students reflected on their overall programmatic experiences in TRIO. A total of 1,913 students were involved in the quantitative analysis, and 16 TRIO seniors participated in the focus groups. Data analysis resulted in the emergence of four major themes: (a) relationships, (b) loyalty, (c) trust, and (d) transformation. These findings were consistent with other studies conducted within the scope of Tinto&rsquo;s (2012) theory of student retention. All of the interview participants identified a profound and personal emotional connection to their time in TRIO SSS. This study was significant due to the lack of previous research that couples the experiences of students with quantitative data. Implications for practice included, but were not limited to, stronger support for first-generation students through a range of campus partnerships and initiatives. Recommendations for future research included expanding this study by examining TRIO programs at other institutions and gathering perceptions of first-generation students through multiple focus groups.</p>

<p> This quantitative study examined the experiences of first-generation college students and the influence of cultural wealth capital on their college outcomes. The study analyzed secondary data from The Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), a nationally representative data set capturing the high school, college and early post-secondary education experiences and outcomes of high school sophomore students in 2002 over a 10-year span, including college and early career outcomes. The scope of the data was narrowed to only examine students that indicated they were first-generation college students. </p><p> Using Tara Yosso&rsquo;s (2005) Community Cultural Wealth model as the conceptual framework, and, using factor analysis, the study operationalized two forms of capital from the model: aspirational capital and navigational capital. Both linear and logit regression analysis were used in examining this relationship between the capital constructs and college pipeline outcomes (enrollment, persistence and graduation) for first-generation college students. </p><p> The study found that for every one standard deviation increase of aspirational capital, first-generation college students were found to be 28.5% more likely to enroll in college. Additionally, for every one standard deviation of aspirational capital, first-generation students were 25.6% more likely to persist through to their fourth semester college, a time when first-generation college students are found to be most likely to drop out of college. The dissertation includes a robust discussion of outcomes and related recommendations for theory, practice and policy.</p><p>

<p> Higher education institutions continue to struggle with encouraging retention for first-year students. Prior research has shown that establishing social integration during the first-year of college is a crucial component of a successful transition and has a positive influence on student persistence and academic success (Astin, 1993; Chapman &amp; Pascarella, 1983; Tinto, 1993). Social integration has historically been defined in terms of peer connections and involvement (Tinto, 1993); however, recent research has explored the importance of sense of belonging as an important psychosocial component in the transition to college (Strayhorn, 2012a). Sense of belonging focuses on feelings of fit, perceptions of social support, and feeling as though one matters to the community. The current study sought to explore the conceptual framework in which sense of belonging was included as a component of social integration. Moreover, this study explored whether institutional action could influence first-year students&rsquo; overall social integration through a focus on peer connections, involvement, and sense of belonging. </p><p> This quasi-experimental, quantitative study analyzed the influence of a campus intervention focused on social integration, called the Belonging Reinforcement Intervention (BRI). The BRI program was delivered to first-year students at a small, private institution during the first three weeks of their collegiate experience. The Belonging Reinforcement Intervention included researched components related to social belonging and normalizing students&rsquo; not feeling an immediate sense of fit (Walton &amp; Cohen, 2011a), reinforcing institutional commitment and belonging through communications (Hausmann et al., 2007), and research focused on peer mentoring as a way to encourage campus involvements (Peck, 2011). The study used a national instrument, the Mapworks Transition Survey, to determine if this intervention could influence the various components of social integration. </p><p> The findings from the study support a comprehensive view of social integration that includes sense of belonging. The findings further indicate that students who participated in the BRI program showed statistically significant increases in peer connections, involvement, and the current study&rsquo;s social integration scale which included sense of belonging. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the BRI program was particularly beneficial for Hispanic students with their intent to become involved and for female students for their overall social integration. The results of this study have implications for future institutional interventions and developing lasting programs that will help first-year students to succeed and persist in their college experience. The conclusions presented suggest that a broader definition of social integration can allow institutions and researchers to better understand and support the challenges students face during the transition to college.</p><p>

<p> The underrepresentation of racial/ethnic minorities and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds in college majors that promote social mobility is problematic. Relative risk aversion theory predicts that disadvantaged students will choose college majors that promote social mobility since they are more secure educational investments. However, the theory of effectively maintained inequality predicts that privileged students, not disadvantaged students, will obtain more secure degrees. To test these theories, I utilized the NC Roots of STEM dataset to model choice of college major. The NC Roots of STEM dataset is a multivariate, longitudinal dataset that followed NC high school seniors from 2004 through 2010. This thesis utilizes a series of multilevel logit models to examine the relationship between race, SES, educational opportunities and students&rsquo; interest, odds of declaration and odds of graduation with a STEM degree. The results give evidence for both theories at work within STEM majors. Disadvantaged students, particularly Black students, are more likely to have interest in STEM majors but are the least likely to graduate in these majors, once controlling for declaring a STEM major. While SES did not appear to have much difference on STEM interest and major declaration, low-SES students were significantly less likely to graduate in STEM majors. These findings give support for effectively maintained inequality within higher education.</p><p>

<p> Race, as Delgado and Stefancic (2001) stress, is a structuring agent that greatly affects the experiences and even the well-being of individuals in US society. While American education has been considered a driver for equality, racism and race-based inequities are significant components of this institution, creating qualitatively different daily and cumulative experiences and outcomes for students based on race. Not only is it important to uncover how race and racism are manifested in educational institutions, but it is also necessary to better understand the intersecting oppressions that work alongside race to create particular experiences for brown and black students.</p><p> Using Critical Race Theory Methodology and relying on the counter-narratives of 31 students of color collected during 9 focus group meetings in the spring of 2014 at a predominately white university in the US Southeast, this study finds that these students are emotionally, academically, and socially affected by microaggressions, namely subtle and overlooked forms of racism and other intersecting oppressions in various campus settings. Sue et al (2007) defines microaggressions as &ldquo;<i>brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to people of color because they belong to a racial minority group </i>.&rdquo; Through such verbal and behavioral cues, brown and black students continually encounter white normativity and &ldquo;otherness&rdquo; throughout campus. Respondents also experience stereotype threat and reveal a social and cognitive burden of reconciling and juggling a complicated identity as <i>students</i> and <i>persons of color</i>, while also internalizing the oppressions they encounter daily. Findings indicate a need for effective training of professors in recognizing their cultural biases and stereotypes they are reinforced through their interactions and curriculum. Sincere and effective awareness efforts need to be implemented on campus for students and faculty, and should replace superficial attempts at diversity awareness that often reinforce racial and other inequities and differences.</p>

<p>This dissertation advances scholarship on how financialization ? the increasing power of financial ideologies and markets ? has transformed diverse organizations, including non-profits, state institutions, and households. In three papers, I explain how financialization has contributed to rising organizational inequality in U.S. undergraduate education education since the 1990s: 1) ?The Financialization of U.S. Higher Education? develops new quantitative measures to find large but skewed relative increases in the financial costs and returns from endowments, colleges? institutional borrowing, equity offerings by for-profit colleges, and student loan borrowing, 2) ?The Transformation of U.S. For-Profit Colleges,? uses a unique college-level and multi-wave longitudinal dataset to show how the spread of shareholder value ideology led to a new industrial-scale business model with negative consequences for student outcomes, and 3) ?The Ivory Tower Tax Haven? explains how long-standing tax exemptions have supported new endowment investment strategies that have fueled rising expenditures to maximize the prestige of the wealthiest universities. Altogether, I highlight the importance of finance ideologies in the shifting balance of resources between and within the many heterogeneous types of U.S. colleges.

<p> This dissertation seeks to explain why large segments of the Jewish community, after working with blacks for decades, often quite radically towards expanding the boundaries of citizenship at City College, rejected the legitimacy of the 1970 Open Admissions policy? While succeeding in radically transforming the structure of City College and CUNY more broadly, the Black and Puerto Rican Student Community's late 1960&rsquo;s political mobilization failed as an act of citizenship because its claims went broadly unrecognized. Rather than being remembered as political action that expanded the structure and content of citizenship, the Open Admissions crisis and policy are remembered as having destroyed a once great college. The black and Puerto Rican students who claimed an equal right to higher education were seen as unworthy of the forms of inclusion they demanded, and the radical democracy of Open Admissions was short lived, being decisively reformed in the mid 70&rsquo;s in spite of what subsequent research has shown to be remarkable success in educating thousands who previously had no hope of pursuing a college degree. This dissertation places this question in historical context in three ways. </p><p> First, it historicizes the political culture at City College showing it to be an important incubator and index of the changing political imaginaries of the long civil rights movement by analyzing the shifting and evolving publics on the college&rsquo;s campus, tracing the rise and fall of different political imaginaries. Significantly, the shifting political imaginaries across time at City College sustained different kinds of ethical claims. For instance, in the period from the 1930 to 1950, Jewish and black City College students tended to recognize each other as suffering from parallel forms of systemic racism within U.S. society. Understanding each other to be similarly excluded from a social system that benefitted a largely white-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant elite, enabled Jewish and black City College students to position themselves and each other as the normative subjects of American democracy. However, in the 1960&rsquo;s, political imaginaries at City College had come to be anchored in more individualistic idioms, and ethical claims tended to be made within individualistic terms. Within such a context, when the BPRSC revived radically democratic idioms of political claims making, they tended to be understood by many whites as pathologically illiberal. </p><p> Second, it historicizes the ways in which City College constructed &ldquo;the meritorious student&rdquo; by analyzing the social, political and institutional forces that drove the college to continuously reformulate its admissions practices across its entire history. It shows that while many actors during the Open Admissions crisis invested City College&rsquo;s definitions of merit with sacred academic legitimacy, they were in fact rarely crafted for academic reasons or according to a purely academic logic. Regardless, many ignored the fact the admissions standards were arbitrarily based, instead believing such standards were the legitimate marker of academic ability and worthiness. By examining the institutional construction of the &ldquo;meritorious&rdquo; student the dissertation shows the production of educational citizenship from above while also revealing how different actors and their standpoints were simultaneously constructed by how they were positioned by this institutional process. </p><p> Finally, the dissertation examines two significant historical events of student protest, the Knickerbocker-Davis Affair of the late 1940's and the Open Admissions Crisis of the late 1960's. In these events, City College students challenged the content of &ldquo;educational citizenship.&rdquo; These events were embedded in the shifting political culture at City College and were affected by the historically changing ways different groups, especially Jews and blacks, were positioned by the structure of educational citizenship. </p><p> While Jews had passed into whiteness by the late 1960&rsquo;s in the U.S, there was no objective reason for many to claim the privileges of whiteness by rejecting a universal policy such as Open Admissions. Yet, many Jews interpreted Open Admissions as against their personal and group interests, and rejected the ethical claim to equality made by the BPRSC. By placing the Open Admissions crisis in deep historical and institutional context, and comparing the 1969 student mobilization to earlier student actions, the dissertation shows how actors sorted different political, institutional and symbolic currents to interpret their interests and construct their identities and lines of action. </p>

<p> Post-secondary student retention and persistence is on the minds of professionals at various higher learning institutions due to the disparities in educational attainment. These disparities may lead to inhibited social mobility, and lack of cultural and social capital. This study examined what factors Southern Connecticut State University sophomore students perceived as aiding or impeding their degree path. It questioned how underrepresented students shaped their perception on their educational attainment and how this compares to the existing research and literature on the success practices of underrepresented students in higher education. The study was conducted using open-ended semi-structured interview questions administered to second year sophomore students at Southern Connecticut State University. Specifically, they were underrepresented students defined as being low-income, racial minority, and first-generation students. This study aimed to explore the narrative of underrepresented students by exploring why college access doesn&rsquo;t necessarily result in college completion. </p><p>

<p> The purpose of this study is to understand how social class background plays a role in student experiences on selective campuses. This study centers the experience of low-income students and extends the work of Ostrove and Long (2007). Previous research has indicated that race, gender, and social class status have each, respectively, been demonstrated to have statistically significant relationships to sense of belonging. This research affirms existing research, but also finds that there are more positive relationships than previously theorized. Minoritized students had higher mean scores related to personal-emotional adjustment and social adjustment. Students from the lowest social class also reported higher scores on the same two adjustment scales than their peers. </p><p> Based in the theory of critical quantitative analysis (Stage, 2007), the research uses the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (Baker &amp; Siryk, 1999) in order to assess sense of belonging. This survey measures overall sense of belonging, academic adjustment, social adjustment personal-emotional adjustment and institutional attachment. Examining these measures in an intersectional way revealed results that were more nuanced than was previously found in the literature. The data was analyzed using simple linear regression, analysis of variance, and hierarchical multiple regression. The survey was conducted among undergraduate students at The George Washington University, a private, urban institution in Washington, D.C. </p><p> In demonstrating that minoritized and economically and educationally challenged students may be adjusting better than has been previously stated, this study emphasizes the need to affirm students in the identities they hold for themselves rather than studying them through deficit models. Reinforcing the cultural and social norms of marginalized groups aids in their personal growth and development, which often leads to a university&rsquo;s desired outcome, which is retention and graduation.</p><p>

<p> As youth sport has become increasingly professionalized, many believe that the route to elite level play is through early specialization. Early specialization is a contentious issue, and many risk factors have been associated with high levels and intensities of training in youth. Youth today participate in highly competitive sport in pursuit of elite levels of play, recognition, and financial gain. Early specialization is thought to be a requirement for advancement, yet little is known about the early experiences of team sport athletes who grew up in the US. This is the story of 15 elite female athletes who &ldquo;made it&rdquo; to Division I soccer. The study offers us a window into the professionalized and commercialized world of youth soccer. It is a description of the childhood and adolescent journeys through sport and spans 10+ years of development. Through its telling, we learn about the expensive pay-to-play pipeline in soccer, we hear of the differences in opportunities that exist between social classes, and we confirm theories of expertise development. We learn that whether a young athlete specializes early or chooses to play multiple sports has little relevance to her progression to Division I. Through our thematic analysis of injury, we see how young athletes routinely play through injury, hide injury from coaches, and carry injury forward into their collegiate playing careers.</p><p>