Labeling a college applicant “first generation” has long been a way to identify students who may need extra support navigating college life. But new research from Common App suggests that binary first- and continuing-generation labels may mask important differences in student outcomes.
Although higher parental education is associated with stronger student outcomes over all, the report found significant variation in completion rates within each parental education category.
Among applicants classified as first generation—defined as students whose parents did not complete a bachelor’s degree—six-year completion rates range from 58 percent for students whose parents have no college experience to 78 percent for those whose parents both hold an associate degree, a 20-percentage-point gap.
Similarly, continuing-generation completion rates range from 70 percent for students who have one parent with a bachelor’s degree to 92 percent for those with both parents holding a doctorate or professional degree—a wide range suggesting that broad labels may obscure important differences in student outcomes and could limit how precisely colleges target support.
Sarah Nolan, the research scientist at Common App who led the study, said that while categorizing students as first or continuing generation isn’t inherently problematic, it can mask the wide variation in student outcomes depending on parental education combinations.
“The findings are not going to be much of a surprise for anyone who’s ever talked with students about their experiences and how difficult it can be to reduce really complex lived realities into a couple of points on a questionnaire,” Nolan said.
The analysis includes nearly 784,000 U.S. Common App applicants from the 2016–17 application cycle and tracks six-year bachelor’s degree completion rates.
Nolan said the results reflect the complex reality of the U.S. today, where a parent’s education is tied to their work, income and financial stability, as well as social and educational opportunities for their children.
“That matters for students’ trajectories through higher education,” Nolan said. “If we try to use first-generation status as a broad proxy for socioeconomic status, cultural capital or access to information, we see that parent education’s association with degree outcomes exists along a continuum.”
Four parental groups: The report identified four groups of parental education combinations with similar college outcomes: striving, emerging, advancing and established. These are not predetermined categories, the report said, but patterns that emerged from the data.
The striving category includes first-generation students with only one parent in their life who did not complete college. The report found that these applicants are correctly identified as first-generation students who need support. Even once enrolled in a four-year program, they complete degrees at rates 20 to 30 percentage points lower than their peers, the report found.
The emerging category includes continuing-generation applicants with one parent in their life who completed a bachelor’s degree and first-generation applicants with two parents who have no or limited college experience. While these groups differ in college experience, economic resources and household structure, the report found they share the challenge of navigating college with “some resources in place and others absent.”
The advancing category includes first-generation applicants with two parents who have some college experience but no bachelor’s degree, as well as continuing-generation applicants with one parent with a bachelor’s degree or higher and a second without a bachelor’s degree. This group illustrates a convergence of disparate parental education combinations: Although the “first-generation label would separate them, their outcomes are nearly identical,” the report found.
The established category includes continuing-generation applicants whose parents both hold bachelor’s degrees or higher. Students in this group have “uniformly high enrollment, persistence and degree completion rates,” with roughly nine out of 10 completing a degree within six years. The markedly higher outcomes for this group suggest that both parents’ education significantly shapes the college experience.
How groups differ: Looking only at the highest parental degree overlooks an important factor: the second parent’s education. An applicant with at least one parent holding a bachelor’s degree could fall into the emerging, advancing or established outcome groups depending on the other parent’s educational experience, the report found.
Nolan said the four categories reflect not only how different student groups cluster together, but also the “continuum nature” that is the report’s main finding.
“The labels we show here are an invitation to curiosity,” Nolan said, noting that higher education leaders can use this data to identify patterns that make sense for their unique student body.
The report found that gaps between parental education groups grow as students progress through college. In other words, the advantage of having highly educated parents becomes more pronounced at degree completion than at initial enrollment.
“I don’t want to overstate how definitive our results are,” Nolan said. “They’re really just capturing broad patterns in higher ed, and I think those broad patterns are, in turn, capturing just how complicated students’ lived experiences are.”
Interpreting the findings: Nolan said the findings show that first-generation status can be a useful lens, but colleges should consider the nuances revealed by parental education patterns.
She noted that in some cases, a simple first- and continuing-generation distinction can still be useful for tracking students and allocating support resources.
“There are contexts where that binary might be helpful—for example, when you’re keeping track of who’s on your campus and what their experiences are,” Nolan said.
Still, Nolan said it’s understandable that institutions might have limits on how much they can disaggregate first- and continuing-generation data.
“I’m not expecting every student support program to create its own bespoke definition of what they care about when measuring first-generation status,” Nolan said. “That being said, our research suggests there might be value in understanding which of your students have just one parent in their life.”
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