11 books match the query 'First-generation college students'
Nunn, Lisa M
Rutgers University Press, 2019
Melisa N. Choroszy
University of Nevada Press, 2019
Shawn Higgins
Temple University Press, 2020
Paul Dean
Rutgers University Press, 2026
When working-class first-generation students enter college or the professional workplace, they often find themselves immersed in entirely new worlds. They must learn the unwritten rules for how to speak, dress, behave, and interact with new peers and colleagues. While striving to fit in and do well, they risk feeling imposter syndrome, a loss of identity, or broken ties with friends and family.
Class Cultures and Social Mobility tells the stories of upwardly mobile first-gen graduates who flipped the script and turned their working-class roots into a strength. This accessible and highly engaging book reveals how first-gen graduates overcame hardship while leveraging unique skills—their working-class cultural capital—in college and their professional careers. It demonstrates there needn’t be a choice between economic success and maintaining authenticity to one’s roots—we can balance the competing demands of the two class worlds together. Whether you're an educator, student, working professional, or advocate, this book provides a powerful way to reimagine the transformations that accompany class mobility.
Lisa M. Nunn
Rutgers University Press, 2021
Tracy Lachica Buenavista
Rutgers University Press, 2023
Jeremy Townley
Rutgers University Press, 2026
Across the country, flagship universities and liberal arts colleges, regional state campuses and Ivy League institutions continue to adapt to a globalized economy. One key internationalization strategy is study abroad. But who gets to have an overseas experience? In Firsts Abroad, Jeremy Townley explores the stories of first-generation college students who participated in study abroad. Because of their multicultural, multilingual backgrounds, nontraditional paths to and through college, and hard-won life experiences, first-generation students possess knowledge, skills, and savvy developed in their families that help them take advantage of their time overseas. While abroad, these students also experience significant gains in social networks and cultural knowledge, as well as important transformations in worldview, that allow for the possibility of upward social mobility. This powerfully argued book reveals that study abroad, so important in a globalized world, may be most essential for students historically underserved by higher education.

Ngoc-Yen Tran
Assoc of College & Research Libraries, 2019
Rowan-Kenyon, Heather T.
Rutgers University Press, 2018
Laura Nichols
Rutgers University Press, 2020
Todd Ruecker
Utah State University Press, 2015
Transiciones is a thorough ethnography of seven Latino students in transition between high school and community college or university. Data gathered over two years of interviews with the students, their high school English teachers, and their writing teachers and administrators at postsecondary institutions reveal a rich picture of the conflicted experience of these students as they attempted to balance the demands of schooling with a variety of personal responsibilities.
Todd Ruecker explores the disconnect between students’ writing experiences in high school and higher education and examines the integral role that writing plays in college. Considering the almost universal requirement that students take a writing class in their critical first year of college, he contends that it is essential for composition researchers and teachers to gain a fuller understanding of the role they play in supporting and hindering Latina and Latino students’ transition to college.
Arguing for situating writing programs in larger discussions of high school/college alignment, student engagement, and retention, Transiciones raises the profile of what writing programs can do while calling composition teachers, administrators, and scholars to engage in more collaboration across the institution, across institutions, and across disciplines to make the transition from high school to college writing more successful for this important group of students.