Employment and the Structure of Colleges as Barriers to College Match and Degree Completion for Latinx First-Generation College Students

ABSTRACT

Undermatching, or students attending less selective colleges than they are academically qualified to attend, is seen as a contributing factor to the lagging college completion rate of low-income and first-generation college students. Addressing the mismatch has been mainly limited to the individual level. Through analysis of interview and longitudinal school administrative data with aspiring first-generation college low-income Latinx youth who started preparing to attend college in middle school, we find that the need to work, which students started doing in high school, was a major factor in students’ undermatching. We show how employment collides with the structure of colleges as racialized organizations (Ray, 2019), especially matching colleges with high graduation rates. Selective colleges did not provide the support students needed to address their financial situations, and students attending schools to which they undermatched required more assistance navigating work and schools to stop them from dropping out. We also discuss program and policy solutions to address the low college completion rates of Latinx first-generation college students more fully as well as how to better support their need to work.

KEYWORDS:

• First-generation college
• college match
• college completion
• employment
• Latinx
• Latino/a
• racialized organizations
• working students

Acknowledgments

Thank you to those who participated in this study as interviewees and staff at the middle school who helped us reach out to school alumni. Thank you also to those who gave feedback on earlier versions of the article, especially Rachelle Brunn-Bevel.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Research ethics

This research protocol went through and passed human subjects review. The research has been conducted consistent with the ethical standards articulated in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its subsequent amendments and Section 12 of the ASA’s Code of Ethics. All participants were informed of the purpose of the research and their rights as research participants. Informed consent was given by all interviewees.

Notes

¹ All school and student names are pseudonyms.