My first introduction to first-generation college students happened in 1969. I was fresh out of graduate school and had gotten a job working for the city of New York helping to create a program that encouraged underserved students, mostly Latinos and African Americans, to apply for admission to four-year colleges and universities. Virtually all of these kids were the first in their families to go to college. My job was to convince the admissions directors of mostly private colleges and universities around the country to take a chance on these so-called first gens even though their SAT scores and high school grades were well below kids whose parents had college degrees. The program successfully placed a number of deserving first gens into good colleges and universities. Later that year, however, the City University of New York adopted a program that guaranteed admission to most New York City high school graduates at one of their senior or community colleges and the Education Incentive Program quickly became redundant.
But over the year I worked for the Education Incentive Program I learned about the uphill struggle first gens faced as they confronted a world that, up until then, had been largely out of reach for most of them. Not only did they often come to college from understaffed and underfunded public high schools but many had also been tracked into vocational courses and therefore had not received adequate precollege preparation. On top of this, their parents had little knowledge of what universities are and how they operate and therefore could not be as supportive as parents who themselves had attended college. Some of the first gens I worked with were successful. Many, unfortunately, didn’t make it.
It might seem counterintuitive, but between 1971 and 2014, the percentage of first-year first-generation college students as a percentage of all full-time first-year students attending four-year colleges declined from 38.5 percent in 1971 to 18.7 percent in 2014. The reason for this decline is in large part attributable to that fact that over this period of time more Americans generally were going to college, as well as the fact that first gens were tending to favor two-year as opposed to four-year colleges and universities immediately after high school. If, however, we believe in the role higher education can play in opening the door to opportunity, we must do much more as a nation to encourage qualified first-generation students to consider getting a four-year college degree.1
This chapter features many of the first-year issues already discussed, but it focuses on challenges that are particular to first gens: What’s it like to be a first gen at a university where many if not most of the students have parents who attended college? What are the unique challenges first gens face as they enter college? What are the particular obstacles faced by first gens who happen to be African American or Latino?
The reception area of Queens College’s Academic Advising Center is a rambling affair located on the second floor of Kiely Hall, the college’s main administration building. Queens College is a division of the City University of New York, an urban public university that serves 270,000 degree-credit students at twenty-three colleges and institutions across New York City. Over 20 percent of its students are the first in their families to go to college, and almost all of them come to college with substantial financial need. On the afternoon I visit, Kiely Hall is a hub of throbbing activity as students prepare to meet with a counselor. A young woman dressed in a sari walks into the center and joins one of the queues. Another student, a bearded Sikh wearing a black turban, explains to the receptionist that he needs to change two of his courses. Between students entering and exiting the advisers’ offices, using the Internet stations, and just chatting with each other in the reception area, this room is a miniversion of New York’s Grand Central Terminal. Laura Silverman, director of advising, waves to me from her office at the end of the reception area. Considering the remarkable busyness she must coordinate, she looks uncommonly relaxed.
Twenty years ago Laura Silverman was a first gen herself. Because her parents’ education ended in high school, she says that she didn’t really know what going to college involved. In her mind at least it was a place you went for one reason only—to prepare for a good job. And so she applied to and was accepted by the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan for a two-year applied associates degree in advertising and communication. As Silverman began her first year at the institute, she was required to take general education courses in the arts and sciences, and these led her to see that there was more to life than—as she puts it—designing a package. Taking these courses at the Fashion Institute of Technology began to challenge her notion of what college is all about. And so she decided to transfer to a senior college and get a proper bachelor’s degree. Her parents were skeptical.
At the State University of New York at New Paltz, Silverman majored in communications, a theory-based subject that required extensive reading and class discussion. It was in a senior-year communications class, reading the thought-provoking theories of Noam Chomsky and Andrew Bell, that a light went on. With the help of a favorite professor, she began to see a panorama, a wider world out there that was bigger than the world she then knew. She also saw that she had an ability to write and so she had decided to minor in journalism. She went on to get a master’s degree in media studies at Queens College. “Here I was motivated by a faculty that was rigorous, challenging, and absolutely first class,” she tells me.
It seems the people at Queens were equally impressed with her. Starting out as a graduate assistant in the dean of students office, she progressed through the ranks, eventually becoming assistant director of the Office of Honors and Scholarships and then assistant and finally director of academic advising. She is a perfect match for the job she now holds. She daily works with first-generation students who share her background, young men and women who come from families that know very little about what college is about beyond being the ticket to a job.
I am so intrigued by Silverman’s story that I fail to notice that outside her office three first-year students, all the first in their families to go to college, have gathered, patiently waiting to meet with us. Silverman invites them in and asks them to join us around the conference table. Because it was hard to get volunteers to meet with me, she and I agreed beforehand that she would remain during the conversation just to make sure the students feel comfortable. Unlike the first-year students at Tufts and Vassar, most of whom come from college-educated families and were actually anxious to meet with me, these first gens are not sure they want to share their intimate stories with a total stranger.
Silverman asks the students to identify themselves and then tell me a bit about their backgrounds. She assures them that their identities will be protected.
The first to speak is Molly, the only child of an Irish-American mother living in Rockaway, Queens. A high school dropout, Molly’s mother separated from her father when she was an infant and then remarried. Her stepfather legally adopted her, but five years ago moved out of the house. Even though he works for the Metropolitan Transit Authority and makes good money, he no longer supports either Molly or her mother. So, at age eighteen, Molly is financially independent. She lives with a boyfriend off campus.
Next to Molly is Imran, a Pakistani American. His parents, with whom he lives, came to America from the Punjab. Though Imran is American born, he didn’t speak English until he started elementary school in the Fresh Meadows section of Queens. His father washes dishes at a Korean restaurant in lower Manhattan and his mother stays at home with Imran’s four younger siblings. Both parents have only the rudiments of a formal education.
Chang, a Chinese national, was born in Shandong province south of Beijing, where his parents still live. His father works for a company that makes signs and his mother is employed by a clothes factory, making sweatshirts for export to North America. Neither have a college education. A couple years ago, Chang moved to the Bronx to live with his uncle, an apartment superintendent and handyman. Chang still struggles with English and it is probably for this reason that he is very quiet. He now resides in Queens College’s new residence hall.
I thank the students for the introductions, tell them what I am writing about, and encourage them to be as candid with me as possible. To get the ball rolling I start out with a noncontroversial question: What are they thinking about majoring in?
Silence. Molly finally ventures an answer. When she came to Queens a few months ago she was thinking that she would go into either speech pathology or speech therapy. But now, after taking some of the general education requirements, she’s thinking about majoring in psychology. “All I know is that I want to work in some kind of therapeutic profession or as a high school guidance counselor,” Molly says. “My plan is to go on to graduate school.”
“What about you, Imran?” He hesitates. “I’m not sure—I’m thinking now about physical education and, if I do this, I plan to go on for a master’s here at Queens. Eventually I want to teach physical education at the high school level.”
Encouraged by Imran’s response, Chang joins right in. Considering that he has been living in the United States for only a couple years, his English is impressive. “I’m going to major in physics and then, after I become a U.S. citizen, go to Cal Tech to do a master’s in aerospace engineering.” The ice has been broken.
I am interested to know if being the first in their families to go to college has been a problem. Yes, says Imran. His parents really didn’t want him to go to college. He says that in Punjabi culture, men go to work right after high school, and this is what his parents wanted him to do. Fortunately, he was eventually able to convince them that in America you need a college degree to get a good job. So do Imran’s parents support his plan to teach physical education? “I don’t think they really know what physical education is,” Imran responds, “so I don’t bother to discuss these things with them.”
Molly chimes in. Her mother is neither supportive nor not supportive—she never went to college and so she has no idea what college is really about. When Molly talks about psychology with her mother, she has no idea what psychology is or why it’s something a person would want to study. So Molly and her mother have a friendly understanding: “When I left for college this fall my mother said to me ‘Whatever you decide, dear, will be OK with me.’ I’m pretty much on my own.”
Chang’s parents were very supportive of him going to college because getting a university education is a big deal in Chinese culture. I suggest to Chang that Chinese universities are very different from universities in the United States and ask him whether his parents understand what the liberal arts are. “My parents don’t understand the liberal arts. Neither does my uncle. And quite frankly, I’m not sure I do either.” He tells me that in China you declare what profession you plan to enter and then take the appropriate courses at university. At Queens College, in contrast, he must take lots of general education requirements. “Sometimes I think I’m wasting my time,” Chang says. “On the other hand, I’ve been forced to take some classes I really enjoy. Well maybe not philosophy. But I love the anthropology class I’m taking.”
I wonder whether first-generation students have helicopter parents like their more affluent classmates, so I ask my new friends how involved their parents are in their lives. Imran says that he hardly ever see his father, who leaves for work at 5 A.M. before Imran is up and sometimes comes back at night after he is asleep. Imran sees his mom all the time, but she’s a control freak and very critical, always on him for not getting his housework done or not working. “When I’m at home all I hear about is how badly I compare to my cousins,” Imran says with a note of bitterness.
Chang says that because of his current situation he will see his parents again only after he graduates. He admits that his uncle in the Bronx is really his family. “He doesn’t know much about college, but he is very supportive of what I’m doing.”
And what has been the biggest challenge for each of these first gens in going to college? For Molly it has been meeting the expectations of her teachers. She finds Queens College to be very difficult compared to her high school, where there was incredibly little homework. In high school everything was scheduled, whereas at Queens College she has an enormous amount of free time. Molly admits, therefore, that time management has been a big challenge for her. “Money has also been a challenge,” Molly says after a pause. “My family is very poor. I wanted to live in the new residence hall but didn’t have enough money so I live off campus in cheap housing.”
Imran says that until he went to grade school, he mostly spoke Punjabi at home. So he struggled with English all through school and even today sometimes finds English a challenge. Fortunately his professors have been very supportive, especially his English professor. “When I got an F on my first English paper, she called me into her office and now she works with me on my essays.” Imran confesses that he probably made a mistake by taking fifteen credits when most of his classmates were taking only twelve. He admits that he really wasn’t prepared for this kind of heavy course load, in large part because he found high school easy. He had no AP or honors courses, no pre-calculus, and his high school teachers weren’t very challenging. But at Queens College, he is struggling. “The amount of work I have to do in some of my classes is incredible,” Imran says, shaking his head. “But Ms. Silverman got me back to twelve credits and she has been very supportive. She’s great.” Silverman smiles.
Citizenship is Chang’s biggest challenge. Because he is an immigrant on a student’s visa, it’s hard for him to get financial aid. Chang had the grades in China to go to college anywhere in the United States—indeed, he was hoping to go to Cornell—but he didn’t qualify for state and federal financial aid and couldn’t afford their high tuition. The main reason Chang came to Queens College was because he was accepted into the Macaulay Honors College with a full scholarship. He tells me that he plans to join the Marine Corps immediately after he graduates so that he can become a U.S. citizen. He repeats his hope to then attend Cal Tech to do a master’s in engineering.
What kind of tensions might lie in this very diverse community? Do these first gens feel comfortable at Queens College? Molly says that for the first few weeks she was terribly lonely and thought she might drop out. But then someone suggested she get involved with the Newman Center, the Roman Catholic student group at Queens. So she did, and Father Wood, the Catholic chaplain, has been a great support to her. Because the Newman Center is located on the second floor of the Student Union with all the other chaplaincies, Protestant, Muslim, and Jewish, Molly says that she’s met lots of first-year students from different religious and cultural backgrounds. She admits that she never knew a Muslim before. “The second floor is a great place to hang out and make friends,” Molly says. “You should meet Father Wood!”
Chang admits that he isn’t the most outgoing guy and therefore initially found it difficult to make friends. But since living in the new residence hall, this has all changed for him. He tells me that his roommate comes from upstate and that he’s become part of his family. “They came to visit him last week and took me out to dinner,” Chang beams.
Queens College has a relatively large Asian American population—about 27 percent—so I ask Chang whether he has any Chinese friends. “Not really,” Chang answers. “I want to be an American, so I’m making a special effort to meet different people.”
Molly seems almost offended by my question. “You really don’t see ethnic clusters like you might see on other campuses—you know, Chinese hanging out with Chinese, Koreans with Koreans,” she says. “Students really connect with each other here based on their interests, not their ethnic or religious background.” Imran agrees with Molly. He says that the campus is a very friendly environment, one in which he can make lots of friends. He feels very comfortable at Queens College.
What advice do Molly, Imran, and Chang have for first gens like themselves contemplating college? “I have three suggestions for first-generation freshmen,” Molly says without hesitation. “First, try to get as much money as possible before you come to college. Look at Work Study and ask the Financial Aid Office about scholarships beyond the obvious ones. Second, take advantage of everything the college has to offer. And finally, realize you can’t slack off. It might have been easy in high school. But college is a different matter!”
Imran: “My parents want me to become the head of our house when I graduate and support it by working. But I don’t want to do this. I want to be on my own. So my advice is to make sure your family understands that this is a time when we are struggling to figure out our future. Our future, not theirs.”
And Chang: “I made the mistake of taking all my general education courses at the same time. Because my English isn’t very good and because these courses required an enormous amount of reading, I was overwhelmed. It would have been much better had I taken some of my freshman courses in physics and computer science because I already took many of these same courses back in China and they don’t require as much English. So, while you learn English, balance general education courses that maybe are more difficult for a foreign speaker with ones that are familiar to you.”
I jokingly ask Chang why he then didn’t take Chinese. Before Chang can answer, Laura Silverman, who has been silent up to this point, jumps in: “Because Queens encourages international students to move outside their comfort zone, we discourage them from taking a class that is too easy.”
As Molly, Imran and Chang leave, I hang back. Because of Laura Silverman’s own background as a first-generation college student and her vast experience advising them, I am eager to hear her views on the special challenges they face the first year. How do first gens and their parents adapt to this new and unfamiliar environment? What are the tensions that arise in the process?
When they first arrive at orientation, can she differentiate between first gens and students whose parents attended college? Sometimes, she says. New students with college-educated parents are more or less familiar with the rationale behind a liberal arts education, namely, that it provides them with exposure to a wide variety of courses that may or may not bear a direct relationship to what they will eventually major in or to what they will become in life. For many first-generation students, conversely, this concept is foreign and odd. For them, education is meant to be utilitarian, a process whereby they absorb a quantifiable amount of useful information from their professors and then eventually do something tangible with this information. She says that this is why many first-year first gens and their parents see business, accounting, and computer science as the only options for serious study. They think these disciplines offer usable information with a reward at the end—specifically, employment. It doesn’t especially matter that maybe they aren’t actually interested in becoming accountants or computer programmers. “Since the liberal arts do not fit hand in hand with their idea of what college should be,” she says, “we often have to start from scratch with these first gens and indoctrinate them into this brave new world of a modern American university. This means encouraging them to seek new interests where the monetary rewards are not always so obvious.”
Silverman gives an example of a first gen who has been able to make this transition. Jacek, better known as Jack to his friends, is a first-year Polish American student she currently advises who was brought up in a working-class neighborhood on Long Island. Jack is much like Imran in that he spoke very little English before he entered grade school. And like Imran, Jack attended a high school with a low graduation rate and where few kids went on to college. The cards were stacked against him. Silverman says that just to get to Queens College, Jack must commute well over one hour each way. Any kid who does this must be dedicated.
When Silverman first met Jack at orientation, he was disoriented and confused. But unlike many of his quiet and withdrawn first-gen classmates, Jack was bold and curious. If he didn’t understand something, he just kept asking questions, even if they weren’t sophisticated questions. For instance, in the beginning Jack wanted to know what disciplines like anthropology or political science were, something many kids already understood. “My point,” Silverman says, “is that unlike some of his first-gen classmates, Jack is inquisitive and open-minded. He really wants to take all those ‘impractical’ liberal arts courses. I really think that inquisitiveness and open-mindedness are important ingredients to college success for first-generation freshmen. And I have no doubt that Jack will do well.”
In their book Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do about It, Claudia Dreifus and Andrew Hacker (himself a Queens College professor) state that students with college-educated parents stand a five times better chance of getting a college degree.2 Clearly, kids whose parents went to college have an enormous advantage over kids whose parents didn’t. I ask Silverman to tell me more about the parents of first gens she works with.
She sees two extremes. On the one hand, some parents of first-generation students are very aggressive about their children’s education and are overly involved. But more often she sees the opposite—that is, parents who are completely uninvolved.3 She gives me examples of both.
At orientation, Silverman was giving a presentation to incoming first-year students and their parents in the Student Union. Sitting almost directly in front of her was a big burly man, presumably someone’s father—the silent type with a gruff exterior, a person who reminded her of her own father. At the end, she asked if there were any questions, knowing you can tell the parents who went to college by the questions they ask. “What is the student-faculty ratio at Queens?” “How many faculty are involved in research?” “What percentage of the faculty have PhDs?” But this guy was just sitting there, arms crossed. No emotion. Stoically passive. Frowning. And, so far, no questions for Silverman.
At the end of the Q-and-A period, Silverman excused the students so that they could meet with their advisers in Kiely Hall across the main quad. She then told the parents that their portion of the program with college administrators would begin in a few minutes. During the intermission, this guy walked up to where Silverman was standing behind the podium. “Ms. Silverman,” he said, “I couldn’t understand a thing you said—but I liked it!” “Here is a nice dad,” she says. “But unlike the more sophisticated college-educated parents present, he really didn’t have a clue what was going on.”
Silverman’s second example is of the opposite extreme, what she calls the aggressive first-generation parent. At the same meeting, as the students were filing out of the Student Union to meet with their advisers and register, she found out that a Korean American mom had followed her daughter to Kiely Hall. After lurking in the hallway for an hour, she pulled her embarrassed daughter out of the classroom so that she could review the courses being planned. She then told her daughter which courses were appropriate—only science and math—and which were not—all the rest. “This mother didn’t have a clue either about college or a liberal arts education,” Silverman says. “But unlike the burly dad who did not understand and was quiet and nonparticipatory but appreciative, she was aggressive and intrusive. While both approaches are problematic for different reasons, at least the dad was willing to let the professionals do their job.”
For many families who are not college educated there is tension between having their children go to college and just getting a job after high school. And so I ask Silverman whether this is an issue with the first gens she advises here at Queens College. Her response surprises me. She tells me that at least here in New York City the issue generally isn’t work versus college. Many parents who did not go to college themselves see a college education as a ticket to the American dream, a notion in part supported by data showing that in 2005 47 percent of new first gens nationally reported that an important reason why they decided to go to college was because their parents supported them in this decision, up from 20.9 percent in 1971.4 The problem, Silverman says, is what these first-gen parents believe the purpose of a college education should be. For many this purpose is very circumscribed. “In the minds of these parents,” she says “the primary reason you go to college is to eventually get a job that hopefully pays better than washing dishes in a Korean restaurant or selling newspapers on Wall Street. Consequently many first-generation students are encouraged by their parents to take very narrow, vocationally oriented courses.”
But children don’t always follow their parent’s advice. Silverman tells me about Salima, a student she advises whose story is similar to her own. Like many Pakistani and Indian students, Salima comes from a particularly traditional family that has long planned exactly what their son or daughter will become in life. For Salima this means becoming an accountant. And Salima has been compliant. She is dutifully taking courses that will lead to an accounting degree. But over the semester, Silverman has noticed a quiet rage building up in Salima. She has taken some political science and history. And last week, at one of their counseling sessions, Salima told Silverman that she is bored to tears in accounting and instead wants to major in international relations with the hope of eventually working for the United Nations. “Here is a young woman,” Silverman says “who is brave enough to go against her parent’s wishes, at least as far as her college education is concerned, and reject that narrow, utilitarian concept of education that her parents, like so many parents of first-generation students, hold.” But Silverman is concerned. She isn’t sure where it will end. She worries the tensions with Salima’s parents will only grow as she moves forward in college.
What about first-gen attrition? What are the signs that might indicate that a first-gen advisee is vulnerable? Silverman lists difficulty engaging, failing to attend class, lack of curiosity, not knowing why they are in college, being on the cellphone or texting all the time, and constantly playing computer games.
She gives me an example of a new first gen she worried was a prime candidate for attrition. This kid—Silverman calls him Harvey—came into her office midway through fall semester wanting to know what courses he should be taking in the spring. Harvey told her that he had had it with the general education requirements. All he wanted to do was take courses in—you guessed it—accounting and business. When she pushed him about why he wanted to take courses in these areas, he had no answer. When she asked him what he wanted to do with accounting and business, he didn’t know either. All he knew was that accountants make a lot of money. So she showed him the requirements for these demanding majors. Now he was less interested. “Why do I have to take calculus for accounting?” he wanted to know. “Why business ethics?” “Why do I have to know about other cultures?” “First-generation freshmen like Harvey who come in and say ‘Just tell me what to do,’” Silverman says “but demonstrate no curiosity, no motivation, nothing, are prime candidates for attrition.”
Inability to manage time is another factor in first-gen attrition. This includes lack of prioritizing, not knowing when to start work on a paper, and not knowing how to “kick start” oneself. With many of these first gens, everything is done at the eleventh hour. Just before finals, Silverman’s office gets extraordinarily busy!
And what advice might Silverman give parents to help their new first gens be successful in college? Her answer will resonate with all first-year parents, not just the parents of first gens. “Support but do not do. Help them to navigate but do not navigate for them. Encourage them to consult and ask questions. Help them to formulate the questions, but do not make decisions for them. They must learn to do this for themselves. Value education. Learn about what education means and how it will benefit your child. Learn about the college or university, its values, goals, mission, and history. Participate in activities and events when invited, like orientation. First-generation parents don’t always do this.”
Key to Laura Silverman’s advice is the notion that first-gen parents must encourage their children to be assertive. Often first-gen students not only fear questioning people in positions of authority but they also don’t know how to negotiate a college’s chain of command. But just like their middle- and upper-class counterparts who tend to understand these things, first gens must speak up when things are not right—when, for example, they are not getting proper academic advice or when they are in a bad resident hall situation. And their parents must encourage them to do this. (See chap. 5 [p. 88] on how to help your child negotiate a college or university’s chain of command when there are problems.)
Most public universities are not noted for their religious life programs. But Queens is an exception. Before the 1970s the various chaplains—Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant—separately worked out of their churches or synagogues off campus. But when Queens College decided to build a student union in 1972, Father Brown (the Catholic chaplain at the time) had a vision. Knowing that the college needed funds to build this new facility, he convinced his diocesan bishop and then the Jewish and Protestant chaplains to offer the Student Activities Corporation, a private entity, a substantial sum of money in return for a long-term lease to occupy the entire second floor of the new building. A ninety-nine-year lease was arranged. Several years later, New York State bought the bond issue, owning the building outright; but they were stuck with the campus ministry because of the ninety-nine-year lease arrangement. Thus a public facility initially embraced three religious organizations (other groups like Muslims joined later), an anomaly in American public higher education. But the marriage between church and state has been a happy one in this instance.
Reflecting on Molly’s comment about being lonely and discovering the Catholic Newman Center on the second floor of the Student Union—where first-generation students of all faiths hang out—I arrange to meet with Father Wood, the Catholic chaplain, and Rabbi Shur, Father Wood’s counterpart at Hillel. I take the elevator to the second floor and am amazed again by the religious diversity of students who attend this institution. A young woman dressed in a black burka exits the elevator with me. I can only see her eyes. A Jewish student in a yarmulke and prayer shawl rocks back and forth in the corner of the foyer over a prayer book.
I pass the Catholic Newman Center and hang a right into Hillel, the Jewish student organization. Displayed near the entryway is a poster announcing that next week the Muslim Student Association and Hillel are cosponsoring a movie with the intriguing title Arranged: Friendship Has No Religion. The poster features two young women, one Muslim, one Jewish, both wearing head scarves, facing each other with big smiles. I walk through a large room of well-worn sofas and tables. Eight students are studying, seven are engaged in earnest conversation, and one is stretched out on an overstuffed couch, deep in sleep. I find Rabbi Shur’s office, where he and Father Wood are sitting around a small conference table piled high with precarious stacks of papers and books.
Rabbi Shur looks just like Santa Claus . . . but with a yarmulke. His smile is contagious. He has spent his life working across religious divides. During the Civil Rights era, he worked with Dr. Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on voter registration projects in the South. A picture of this event joins several other knickknacks on a windowsill. Father Wood’s face is equally jolly. He wears a full Roman collar and reminds me of Karl Malden, the actor who portrayed a New York City priest in On the Waterfront. Even before I engage them in conversation I sense that these two men have known each other forever and are good friends.
The Student Union is a striking scene of religious and cultural pluralism. What is it like for first gens who have lived their entire life in an ethnic New York City neighborhood to come to Queens College? Rabbi Shur responds with one word. “Shocking.” He explains himself.
“Many of these freshmen have been nurtured by parents in family and neighborhood environments that are generally distrustful of American culture. So when they come to ‘Planet Queens College’ it’s as though they landed on Mars.” He continues: “Two groups of Jewish freshmen come to mind, Orthodox Jewish women, many of them just back from a year in Israel, and Bukharan Jews from Uzbekistan.” Rabbi Shur gestures to a group of young women sitting on a sofa just outside the door of his office. They are all wearing head coverings and dressed so that they do not show any skin except for their faces and hands.
“Let me give you an example of both,” he says. “One of my freshmen this year comes from Kew Garden, Queens. Her father went to a yeshiva—a Jewish religious training school—but not to an American university. This young woman’s Hebrew name is Devorah, but at Queens College faculty and students have Anglicized her name to Debby. So now when she goes to class her professors address her as Debby and to her this is very alien. Now, last week she was in my office very upset. She is taking a political science class and one day the professor, a New Left socialist and a secular Jew, started ranting against Israel. Devorah doesn’t know how to handle this distressing situation. Israel is her second home and she has never heard anyone say a negative word about it. Should she protest and risk getting a bad grade? Or should she just shut up? Devorah is a timid and rather introverted young woman who all of a sudden is confronted by an impious person who, in her eyes at least, is mouthing blasphemy. And she wants me to tell her what to do. So I have to explain to her what freedom of speech means in the university and that debates about Israel’s place in the world, even among Jews, is common here. I suggest that she join a group at Hillel that teaches Jewish students how to deal with these controversial issues.”
“The other example I have in mind,” Rabbi continues “is a freshman from Uzbekistan, a Bukharan Jew by the name of Yosef who lives in Rego Park. Of course, he is called Joe here at Queens College. God blessed this kid with good looks and a great personality. Anyway, Yosef leaves his insular Bukharan neighborhood and comes here to a culture where everyone hangs out with everyone else, blacks, Latinos, Chinese American, you name it. Here there is both interfaith and intercultural socializing and dating. Now Yosef could date any Jewish girl he wanted to. But what does he do? He hooks up with a good looking Latino from Corona, Queens. This is a no-no in general. But in his Bukharan community, it’s a no-no with capital punishment! So because of the prohibitions in both communities, these two freshmen try to keep their relationship secret. But of course, everyone knows. Yosef eventually comes to see me. He tells me that he has met the girl of his dreams. He says that they have seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding thirteen times because it’s all about them. But I can see the hard reality. Because of who they are and where they both come from, this relationship is in trouble, especially when the families eventually find out. So I try to tell Yoef the difference between ‘Miss Right’ and ‘Miss Right Now.’ These are real life issues that many first gens must deal with when they come to college.”
Father Wood has been nodding in agreement. Does he see these same issues at his end of the second floor? “Oh yes,” he says, giving Rabbi Shur a suggestive wink as though they often compare notes on the students they work with. I’m wondering whether Yosef’s Latino girlfriend has been in Father Wood’s office over at the Newman Center for the same reason. “Eastern European Catholics often come to Queens College from the same kind of insular background. Vira comes to mind. Vira is the Christian version of Yosef, I guess. She is a first-generation freshman whose parents are Albanian Catholics who immigrated to the U.S. two years ago and now live in Morris Park. Before college even started her father and mother made it known to me that they wanted their daughter to only meet Albanian Catholic men. But Vira has a mind of her own. She dates whomever she pleases, Jews, Christians, Muslims. She’s fearless. But she has to hide it from her parents. And just like Yosef and his Latino girlfriend, her classmates know exactly what’s going on.” Father Wood continues: “These kids live in two different worlds. During the day they live in a modern, multicultural world here at Queens College. But when they go home in the evening, they live according to the ethnic and religious traditions and customs of their parents and the surrounding community.” Rabbi Shur jumps in. “In fact, this is precisely why their parents send them here. They want their kids to get a modern American university education. But they also want to keep them under the watchful eye of the community. Because it’s largely a commuter campus, Queens College fits the bill perfectly.”
Father Wood continues, “I have been a chaplain here for almost twenty years and in all these years I have witnessed maybe twenty interfaith marriages, mostly between nonobservant Jews and nominal Christians. In the context of the general population, that is not many. Religion and culture are very powerful forces. The stronger the religious and ethnic ties at home, the more likely these first-generation Queens College students will eventually end up right back in the neighborhood they came from.”
Maybe so, I’m thinking to myself, but what I’m seeing here at Queens College is an incredible demonstration of religious and cultural mixing. And so I ask Rabbi Shur and Father Wood to share with me ways these various groups cooperate with each other, considering the insulated backgrounds they come from.
Father Wood says that the various religious groups represented here on the second floor regularly come together around common programs that are mostly noncontroversial, at least from a religious or ethnic perspective. “Is the movie Arranged I see advertised here on the second floor one of these ‘noncontroversial’ programs?” I ask. “Well, yes and no,” Rabbi Shur says. “The film is being cosponsored by us and the Muslim Student Association. It’s about two young women who are public schools teachers in Brooklyn, one an Orthodox Jew like Devorah and the other a Muslim. They become friends and discover how similar they are to each other, especially because they are both going through arranged marriages. In one sense the movie is controversial. But because it is about Muslims and Jews relating to each other, in another sense it isn’t.”
“OK. So what about conflict? Surely there must be some interfaith friction up here,” I wonder out loud, remembering an account I read in the Knight News, the Queens College student newspaper, about a recent incident involving the president of the Young Republicans calling Muslims terrorists. A well-known Imam, Siraj Wahhaj, was scheduled to speak at the Student Union, and the student’s comments incited protest from the college’s growing Muslim student population.
“If you are referring to the imam who spoke here a couple of weeks ago,” Father Wood says, “he actually gave quite a good address, affirming positive relations between Muslims, Jews, and Christians and taking as his personal role model Martin Luther King. He was hardly the firebrand some thought he would be.”
Rabbi Shur assures me that this incident was atypical. “Most of our students are too busy to get into spats around religion. If there is conflict, it probably takes place on Facebook or at social parties. I don’t know. I just don’t see it here.”
A final question: “How do you interact with the parents of these first-generation students? Certainly they must fret about what goes on with their kids when they are on campus.”
Rabbi says that parents want him to make sure their kids are not slacking in their religious obligations. “I remember a father who encouraged me to shadow his son to make sure he was being observant. He wanted me to do this without letting his son know of his concern.”
Father Wood shares a similar story. “A freshman from a devout Catholic family told his parents soon after he arrived here this fall that he was meeting with me on a regular basis just like he apparently had done with his priest back home. But this kid’s shadow never darkened my doorstep. So I tracked him down and chastised him, suggesting that he at least be honest with his parents.”
Nationally, Black and Latino students, many of them first gens, make up 26.9 percent of the total student population attending all institutions of higher education, about the same as the 27 percent who attend Queens College.5 And so I decide to explore the different challenges some of these students face as they go off to college. What’s it like to move from a crowded urban neighborhood to an attractive and spacious campus? How easy is it to fit in with mostly majority white and Asian American students? What are the principal causes of minority attrition?
I wander across the Queens College campus looking for Delany Hall, where Frank Franklin, director of the Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) program, has his office. The SEEK program was implemented by the city of New York largely for first-generation New York City students with significant financial need, mostly but not exclusively American minorities. Franklin is a muscular but distinguished looking man in his early sixties. He has the arms of a weight lifter but the face of a scholar. Like Laura Silverman, he was the first in his family to go to college. But his story is somewhat different.
Franklin grew up in the Jim Crow South on a farm near Richlands, North Carolina. “Well, actually,” he tells me, “the town is called Haw Branch. But nobody ever heard of it.” His parents moved to New York City when he was a baby. Even though they returned to Haw Branch from time to time to visit, Franklin was really brought up by his grandmother and aunt. To get to high school in Jacksonville, North Carolina, he had to spend long hours on the school bus, almost twenty-three miles each way. During high school football season, he often didn’t get home until 8 P.M.
Like a lot of rural blacks, Franklin was tracked into the high school commercial course, but his football coach saw college potential in him and got him switched to the academic track. By his own admission Franklin was not the greatest high school student, but he was nevertheless accepted as a probationary student on a football scholarship by Johnson C. Smith University, a historically black school in Charlotte, North Carolina. He knew he had to prove himself, not only on the football field where he played halfback, but in the classroom as well. And that’s what he did, graduating in 1968. “What I learned from high school and college football,” Franklin tells me, “is that when you get knocked down, you got to get right back up. You need persistence to get through life.” That persistence, or “grit,” took him through a series of ups and downs: a teaching-training assignment in Harlem just as the New York City school system was shut down by a teachers strike; a job with a California book company hawking textbooks to local New York City schools; a job working with abused children in Queens; then several jobs with SEEK at Queens College—as a financial aid counselor, financial and budget officer, and then as acting director. When the SEEK directorship came open in 2001, he applied, for the second time. This time he got the position that he’s held ever since. “Coming up through college in the South,” he tells me, “I learned how fortunate I really was to get a college education. And if I learned one thing at Johnson C. Smith it was that you’ve got to give back. That’s what I’m doing with these SEEK students.”
The SEEK program is a good example of the kinds of educational opportunity programs that many colleges have established for first-generation students. Created in 1965 as a way to help first generation blacks and Latinos in New York City attending the City College of New York, the oldest school in the City University system, SEEK initially served only these two minority groups. But in the 1970s not only were the parameters for participation widened—now all New York City first-year students below a certain financial level can benefit from SEEK—but SEEK itself was expanded to the other City University campuses, Queens College included.
Today, first-year students accepted into the SEEK program at Queens are supported at four levels. First, they receive funds from New York State for books and incidentals that supplement the financial aid they receive from federal and local government. Almost all SEEK students receive full tuition. Second, they are assigned a counselor who stays with them through their four years of college. These counselors provide academic and personal counseling and advice. Each counselor also teaches a Student Life Workshop that all SEEK students are required to take first semester. Third, each student receives academic support in terms of tutoring and supplemental instruction. And finally, in conjunction with the academic programs, SEEK can select its own faculty who teach English, math, and world studies first semester and then courses in their own discipline during the second semester.
The classes affiliated with SEEK are purposefully small, between twenty and twenty-five students, and are made up of “learning communities,” groupings of first-year students who take all their courses together. In addition to SEEK-specific courses, these first-year students take a writing-intensive English course and an elective taught by regular Queens College faculty. By sophomore year, SEEK students are fully integrated into the regular Queens College curriculum, still maintaining contact with their original SEEK counselor.
The program works! Frank Franklin tells me that the SEEK retention rate from first to sophomore year is 87 percent—higher than the retention rate for the college’s regular students—although the four-year graduation rate of 42.6 percent is not quite as good.6 Then again, the challenges faced by these first gens, financial and otherwise, are enormous. That so many survived at all is a testimony to SEEK’s effectiveness.
It used to be that remediation was a dirty word in the vocabulary of American higher education, something colleges and universities didn’t want to make too public lest it affect their ratings in various publications like U.S. News and World Report. But with 35 percent of all high school students attending a four-year college in the United States not prepared for college-level work, according to an editorial in the New York Times, remediation is considered the norm, not the exception.7 In New York City the need for remediation is even more acute: 77 percent of New York City high school students (many of them first gens) are unprepared for college because of some weak city high schools.8 So educational opportunity programs like SEEK have become an accepted part of the country’s educational landscape. And why not? If our goal in America is to open the American dream to as many people as possible, especially to underserved populations, and if programs like SEEK can give these first-year students a head start toward academic success, who cares what the ratings say!9
Franklin and I sit in his postage-stamp office on the first floor of Delaney Hall around a small conference desk piled high with folders, books, and other clutter that partially block my view of him. Building on what Laura Silverman said about the challenges of the first gens she advises, we discuss how these first-year SEEK students adapt to Queens College and eventually find their niche. Because most of the SEEK students he works with have absolutely no idea what college is about, they are required to attend a special summer orientation program. Some come to this program not quite sure what to expect. Others have totally unrealistic expectations about what going to college means or entails. Still others don’t even know how to behave in the classroom.
“I think one of the biggest adjustments these first gens must make,” Franklin says, “is to their physical surroundings. I mean, look out the window. This college looks pretty much like a country club. There are trees. There is grass. This is not Bedford Stuyvesant! This place is hardly what they expected and, frankly, many of them find the college intimidating.” Eventually these first gens are reassured that this really is the place they want to be because they quickly see how welcoming the college is, he says; that it isn’t just a bunch of buildings and broad lawns but people as well—people who care about them.
What kinds of unrealistic expectations do many SEEK students have? Franklin recently worked with a young man, LeBron, who said on his application that he wanted to become a medical doctor. On the very first day of the summer program LeBron came to Franklin’s office with his mother in tow and wanted to know what he had to do to get a medical degree. Franklin had to tell LeBron and his mother that there are certain courses LeBron would have to take before going to medical school and becoming a physician; that you don’t start out by taking some college courses and four years later get your MD. Franklin then had to break the news that, for starters, LeBron would have to improve his math skills substantially. “I could tell they didn’t believe me,” Franklin says. “So I had to patiently go over all the requirements for premed.”
Franklin also works with SEEK students who come to Queens not knowing how to behave in class. “It’s really not their fault,” he says. “Many of them come from overcrowded and underfunded city high schools where they were pretty much left to their own devices. They must now learn that in class they should not be talking to friends while the professor is speaking. They need to learn how college students act. One first-year student from one of the worst neighborhoods in the Bronx, Rico, usually sat at the back of the room chatting with his friends and not paying attention. It wasn’t only his professor who was complaining about Rico’s behavior, but some of his classmates as well. Anyway, I had to call him into my office. ‘You don’t talk in class, Rico, until the professor calls on you. You bring pencil and paper and you take notes. You turn your cell phone off.’ Kids from affluent high schools automatically know this.”
What other challenges do first-year SEEK students face? Learning how to deal with the system is one of them. Soon after they arrive at Queens, these students must make contact with the business office, the health center, and the Financial Aid Office. And because everyone else is trying to get into these places at the same time there are long lines. Often, when they discover they don’t have the appropriate documents and have to return, they just give up in disgust. Franklin tells me about Tina, an African American first gen and another one of his advisees. When Tina went to the Financial Aid Office at the beginning of the semester to clarify her financial aid package, she was told, after standing in line a good hour, that she needed to bring in her parent’s income tax returns. She just knew that no way was her father going to give her this information. Not only would he be reluctant to share financial information with his daughter, but he generally distrusted bureaucracies. “So Tina ended up in my office upset and ready to quit,” Franklin says. “I had to explain to her why this information is needed, that it would only be used to determine the amount of financial aid she will receive. I suggested that if her father didn’t want her to know what his financial situation is, he could bring in the information himself.”
Yet another challenge these students deal with is how much time they must spend studying. “In my opinion,” Franklin says, “freshmen should be spending twenty or more hours per week doing reading assignments, writing papers and generally preparing for classes.10 But some of these kids spend maybe an hour, if that. They just don’t have a clue about how many hours they must devote to study in order to succeed in college.”
Are the challenges African American and Latino SEEK students face different than the challenges faced by nonminority students? “Well, you have to remember,” Franklin says, “that most African American and Latino students were the majority at their New York City high schools. At Queens College, on the other hand, the majority are white and Asian. So African American and Latino freshmen often feel self-conscious and out of place.” He gives an example. “This fall I counseled a young African American who faced a perception issue. He wore baggy pants that fell well below his hips. He wore a ‘do rag’ on his head, one of those black skull caps that African American young men often wear. We try to encourage our African American freshmen not to look so stereotypical. But they do anyway. It’s kind of a statement about who they are and where they come from. But it can cause others to make unwarranted assumptions about them. Anyway, this young man felt increasingly uncomfortable when he was in class with other non-SEEK students. He expressed this by being openly aggressive and confrontational. His attitude was ‘no one can tell me what to do or what to look like’ and this eventually got him into trouble both with his classmates and his professors.” On Franklin’s suggestion, this young man eventually ended up with Mr. Modeste, one of SEEK’s senior counselors who spoke candidly, one black man to another, about how he looked and behaved and how people perceived him. He got the message and is now more aware of the choices he is making.
The principal causes of attrition for Franklin’s African American and Latino advisees are financial. Because these students are a critical part of the family’s income, they are pulled in other directions. “We recommend that SEEK students not work full time during the first year of college,” he says. “We do this because they have skill deficiencies and really need to spend time working on them. They can’t do this and work full time as well. It’s really all about skills like reading, writing, and math, so that when they move into regular classes sophomore year they will survive.”
Unfortunately, Franklin is fighting an uphill battle. According to the Higher Education Research Institute, 55 percent of all new first gens are expected by their families to get a job to pay college expenses. Moreover, a higher proportion of these first-year students than their peers worked twenty or more hours per week in their final year of high school, a gap that has been widening over the years.11 As we saw at Washington College, working this amount of time can adversely affect academic performance.
Family problems are another cause of attrition. Franklin remembers a SEEK first-year student who told him that because her parents were constantly fighting with each other, she couldn’t study at home. “If we hadn’t worked out a way she could study here in the library,” he says, “she probably would have dropped out of school altogether.” Franklin pauses. “Oh yes, spending too much time having fun is another cause of attrition. Queens is not a party school, but some of our SEEK students spend far too much time hanging out in the Student Union and then don’t come to class.”
I ask Franklin whether being in an opportunity program creates a stigma for his SEEK students. Frank shakes his head. “In the past, SEEK was viewed as a ‘black’ program and if something bad happened on campus, the assumption was that SEEK students were involved. But this is no longer the case. Because Queens College is such a diverse community to begin with, and because SEEK has been here for so long, black and Latino SEEK students blend in with the rest of the community. For all intents and purposes they are simply seen as regular Queens College students. There is no stigma.”
Finally, what advice might Frank Franklin have for the African American or Latino parents of first-generation students? His answer is clear and precise: “Don’t push your student to work the first year because they need to focus all of their energies on being college students. Understand that your child’s financial aid monies should only be used for school purposes. Provide a quiet place at home for homework. And most importantly, try to understand the new pressures your student is now under and be supportive.”
Marita is a first-year SEEK student. Bilingual since childhood—Marita only speaks Spanish at home where she lives with her parents—her English is flawless, with a slight Queens’ accent. Marita was born in Manhattan where her father works in a restaurant and does various jobs. Her mother stays at home taking care of her two younger sisters, though before coming to New York she was a cook in Mexico City. Marita has three siblings: an older brother who never went to college and two younger sisters, one in middle school and the other a junior in high school. She lives across the street from the Queens College campus.
Like all SEEK students, Marita is on full scholarship. She doesn’t know yet what she wants to major in, but her father hopes that she and her sisters will get good jobs so that they can support their extended family.
Marita’s biggest surprise coming to college was finances. At $6,000, Queens College’s otherwise modest annual tuition would be a small fortune for her family. But as a SEEK student she gets full financial aid. She didn’t even have to take out a loan. “When I was accepted into SEEK,” Marita says, “and got my scholarship, my father said, in disbelief, ‘You just don’t get things like this for free!’”
Another surprise was Queens College’s size. Even though she lives just across the street, Marita had never walked on the Queens College campus because she thought going to college was never in the cards for her. She imagined Queens to be like a city high school. But when she arrived at orientation this summer, she couldn’t believe how many large buildings there were and how beautiful the campus was. “I mean this library is like a palace!” Marita says as she gazes up at the atrium under which we are seated. “I also thought that professors didn’t really care about students, that you are just a number,” she continues. “But they really do care. What a surprise that was!”
“Mom is absolutely proud of me.” Marita says, “She’s constantly bragging about the fact that she has a daughter in college. Dad’s not really a man of many words, but I know he is proud as well. Actually, he played a very important part in my decision to come here after I was admitted to SEEK with a full tuition scholarship. Last year he told me, ‘There’s no excuse not to go to college now,’ and he really pushed me to do it.” She adds that her younger sisters thinks it’s really cool that she is a college student, and Marita says that she now wants to be a role model because she hopes that they might go to college as well.
What special challenges does Marita face as a minority among a largely white and Asian American student body? While Marita sometimes feels awkward being Mexican American in a largely non-Latino population, she doesn’t let it get to her. “I mean, I’m proud of my heritage,” she says, “but I’m also proud to be an American. I guess I want to get beyond old stereotypes and just be who I am. So my feeling about the majority of students here is ‘I’m here and you’re here and we are both here to learn.’”
But Marita feels a very definite tension between her ethnic background and, as she puts it, being an American. “Here at Queens College, you are expected to behave in a certain way. At home, it’s different. Here I speak English and eat pizza in the Student Union like all the students do. At home I speak Spanish and eat pollo encacahuatado, my mother’s favorite dish. Here we are always rushing from class to class and to various activities. At home life is very casual.” Marita says that another tension that exists between her Mexican heritage and being an American is where her parents expect her eventually to live. Her dad hopes that when she finishes college she will continue to live with the family like many grownup Mexican American children do. His plan, she says, is to buy a large five-family house so that her brother and sisters and their families can eventually live together. “But I want to experience something new,” Marita says with passion. “I want to experience other places. And I know that this will create tension.”
Marita wasn’t sure at the start about SEEK. She found registration frustrating with all the different classes she had to choose from, and was initially flummoxed by all the free time she now has. Margarite Equizabal, her SEEK counselor, sat down with her and patiently went through everything step by step. She recommended courses and suggested what might be good for Marita to take. She also asked about her life in general. Marita tells me that she sees lots of SEEK students going into Equizabal’s office and that she’s always available. “I never had someone like that in high school,” she says. Her comment reminds me of Dean Long’s counseling session with Carla at Vassar. Dean Long was also concerned about the total student, not just the academic program they were taking.
And what does Marita want first gens and their parents to know? “First, I want them to know that there is help when you go to college and that you are not alone. Also, don’t be afraid to ask questions even if you think they are dumb questions. Second, remember that while academics are important, going to college is also about making new friends. Don’t miss out on life. Third, I thought classes would involve horsing around like in high school. But in college, the teachers are serious and you’ve got to be serious as well. Fourth, I thought college would be easy. But it is intense. Lots of homework. This is definitely not high school. Finally don’t limit yourself just to things you are good at. Roam around campus. Go to events. Work hard because you’re probably going to go to grad school and you want to do well in college. And get to know your professors because they can really help you in the future.” Marita pauses and then adds: “As for parents: Give your kids more freedom. Let them grow up and become adults.”
Bill Modeste, SEEK’s senior counselor, is a thin man with a kindly face and a big grin. Mr. Modeste—out of respect, everyone addresses him as “mister”—has been around the block a few times. A native of Harlem, he is old enough to remember when Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play professional baseball in the major leagues, visited his grade school! Except for college at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he witnessed racial discrimination firsthand, and a stint in the U.S. Army as a medic, Modeste’s entire life has been spent in New York City working with low-income kids. Before joining the army he was a counselor with New York City’s Youth Board in the Bronx and then, after his army service, with the Urban League as a vocational counselor working with high school dropouts. In 1966, the year SEEK was founded (and two years before I was employed by the Education Incentive Program, also in New York City), Modeste joined the program, so he probably knows better than anyone the enormous challenges first gens face as they begin college.
Meeting with Bill Modeste presents me with a golden opportunity to ask a question that has been on my mind ever since I first came to Queens College. “What is it that makes Queens College such a special place for first gens? Is it the curriculum? The financial aid? What’s the secret?”
Modeste expresses a sentiment I have heard from others at Queens College: “First-generation students who come here are all different,” he says, “so there is no one reason why so many of them succeed. Having a diverse campus where everyone pretty much gets along obviously helps. So does the generous financial aid we are able to provide these students. No doubt, the way first-generation students are integrated into the Queens College curriculum is an important factor. But, if I were to identify one major reason why we are so successful here, it would be because all of us, teachers and counselors alike, show genuine interest in these students. When you really care about these kids. When you are honest with them. When you tell them what they must do to succeed. When they come to see that you really believe in them, they respond accordingly.”
Modeste and his staff have almost become surrogate parents for their SEEK students, and like all good families they provide them with not only support and encouragement but also tough love. “What I mean by tough love,” he says, “is telling these kids what they must do in order to succeed in life, even if it means telling them the hard, brutal truth. When they begin to waver, when they think about dropping out, we sometimes have to spell out the possible and very real consequences of quitting, like ending up in a dead-end job or even going to jail. We don’t candy-coat the truth.”
Modeste becomes pensive. “These kids will almost always rise to the level of our expectations for them. But to do this we have to create a culture and an environment here, what I call a ‘citadel of positiveness and success,’ that says to them ‘You can make it. You can be successful.’”12
I am impressed with what Queens College has done with its first-generation students. But not all colleges have comprehensive programs like SEEK or staff like Bill Modeste, Frank Franklin, and Laura Silverman, who have dedicated their lives to working with these students. So what do first-gen parents do when the college their student is attending has limited support services?
Whether or not your child’s college has an opportunity program like SEEK, good advising will be critical to their success, preferably from someone who understands the special needs of first gens and has worked with them in the past. If the adviser assigned your student has not had this experience or doesn’t seem to know what they are doing, you should encourage your student to speak up and ask for an adviser who is more appropriate. Colleges and universities usually have a point-person in the dean of students office who works with first gens and especially first gens who are underserved students, and this person might be able to suggest such an adviser. Your student should also seek out whatever support services are available and not be embarrassed to use them. Colleges often have first-year programs designed to help students adjust to college-level academics or to college life in general. These programs are usually offered, sometimes for credit, during the academic year but also in the summer just before orientation, and they are often free. In addition, many colleges and universities have a learning and/or writing center that provides tutors in certain college subjects but also can help your student develop learning and writing skills. Finally, larger universities often sponsor a black or Hispanic/Latino student union. If your student is Latino or African American these unions will not only help them identify additional resources but also provide a place where they can socialize with classmates from similar backgrounds. Remember: encourage your student to be assertive. And strongly suggest that they use the resources available to them. Doing so might mean the difference between success and failure.