The number of first-generation students enrolled in degree-granting, Title IV institutions dropped by 13% from 1996 to 2020, according to a research brief by the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, a nonprofit studying college access.
The decrease in first-generation students correlates with rising degree attainment among Americans. At the same time that first-generation representation dropped, the U.S. bachelor’s attainment rate increased by 14 percentage points, reaching 38% of the population.
At least one parent in a U.S. household is more likely to hold a bachelor’s degree now than 25 years ago, notes Sean Simone, the paper’s author and director of the Pell Institute.
“As the country becomes more highly educated, it provides more students with the social capital required to attend and be successful in higher education.”
First-generation students still make up 53% of all learners enrolled in a degree-granting institution.
“This research gives us a moment to celebrate how far our country has come—and to confront the work that remains,” Kimberly Jones, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education, said in a press release.
How student services have contributed to first-generation success
The report’s findings substantiate the benefits of long-term higher education programs, such as TRIO, that provide financial aid and wraparound support for first-generation students, Simone writes.
More than a quarter (26%) of students whose parents or guardians have not completed a bachelor’s degree are in poverty, according to a profile conducted by the Pell Institute. Moreover, 26% have at least one foreign-born parent and over half do not speak English at home.
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Once enrolled in college, these students struggle with persistence, retention and connecting to viable career pathways.
A 2019 study by the U.S. Department of Education found that low-income students enrolled in a TRIO program were 48% more likely to earn an associate’s degree or transfer to a four-year institution than similar students not enrolled in the program.
However, TRIO has been scrutinized by the Trump administration. Since September, the federal government has frozen $660 million in grant funding, according to Texas Standard.
“The Trump administration has said in their budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year that they don’t believe that college access is the barrier it once was for low-income students,” Silas Allen, who covers education for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, told Texas Standard. “[They said] that colleges should use their own money to recruit underrepresented students.”
