Separate Dorms for First-Generation Freshmen?

December 16, 2011, 5:19 pm

The Chronicle recently featured a story about the University of Kentucky’s initiative to provide a separate experimental residence hall for students who are the first in their family to attend college. The new residence hall, according to reporter Lacey Johnson, is “created specifically for first-generation freshmen,” and offers “on-site tutoring, weekly seminars about adjusting to college life, and special field trips to help students get to know one another.” The hall is meant to provide “an opportunity to be with people of a similar background who are facing the same challenges.”

Students are free to choose whether or not to apply to live in the dorm; and the hall is only for freshman year. But I still think this is a counterproductive idea that should be nipped in the bud because it undercuts the central arguments for having greater socioeconomic diversity in higher education: to maximize social mobility for disadvantaged students and to create an educationally valuable diverse environment for everyone on campus.

As readers of this blog know, I’m fairly obsessive in my criticism of the way higher education mistreats low-income, working-class, and first-generation college students. Since my 1996 book, The Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action, I’ve argued colleges should give a preference to low-income and working-class students in admissions. Subsequently, I edited two books that include chapters by leading scholars arguing for special support programs for economically disadvantaged students: America’s Untapped Resource: Low-Income Students in Higher Education (2004) and Rewarding Strivers: Helping Low-Income Students Succeed in College (2010). Week after week, in this blog, I rail against practices such as non-need merit aid and early admissions as unfair to economically disadvantaged students.

But separate dorms, even though intended to help ease the transition of first-generation college students, make little sense in my view.

First, networks matter in college, and they appear to especially matter for low-income students. Research has long found that half of adult jobs are filled through some sort of a personal connection. Whether it’s fair or not, middle- and upper-middle-class students have, on average, more valuable employment networks than low-income students. While there is some controversy over whether students benefit from attending a more selective college, even the skeptics concede there is value added for low-income students–probably because of access to networks they wouldn’t otherwise be able to avail themselves of.

At the University of Kentucky, one first-generation student tells the Chronicle, “Everybody in the dorm knows everybody else, and we all hang out together.” This is surely comforting to many first-generation students but it also means they are spending less time with more advantaged students on campus. Freshman ties can be very important to friendships throughout college, and being in a first-generation dorm can mean being cut off from important networks.

Second, part of the reason that colleges want to diversify and admit more low-income, working-class or first-generation students is the belief that all students benefit when discussions are enriched by people who bring different life experiences to bear. Of course, first-generation students living in separate dorms will still share classrooms with other students, but surely something is lost when late night freshman dormitory bull sessions are effectively segregated.

The University of Kentucky is to be commended for providing special tutoring and services to first-generation students, who, on average, have lower graduation rates, but this can be accomplished without separate living spaces. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for example, has a series of programs for low-income Carolina Covenant scholars: faculty and staff mentoring of first-year students; peer mentoring by experienced Covenant Scholars; special development opportunities such as etiquette dinners and career workshops; and social events for Covenant Scholars, all of which–along with a strong financial aid program–have boosted student retention and graduation.

But separate dorms are a mistake. In years past, well-meaning institutions had separate dormitories for students of color in order to ease their transition, but many of those have since been abandoned as an anachronism. First-generation students face special challenges and deserve special programs and support, but separating them from others on campus is likely to do them–and the other students on campus–more harm than good.

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missoularedhead

Why am I not surprised that Wikipedia is #1? And it’s so easy to catch, too.
electronicmuse

What’s the problem? Why worry?

The next generaton will all get rich taking in each others’ laundry. (At least this is one thing that willl work only “on line,” not “online.”
http://www.facebook.com/chris.fuccione Chris Fuccione

Just so you guys all know. I first wrote this back when I was in Elementary School in 1973. I’m not sure how this joker Marc Parry got a hold of my paper. LOL!
kantopet

Fortunately all of us old fogeys who try to teach them things don’t even know how to spell Gogl- Googa- Googe-, whatever … let alone know how to use it to search for copied content on the Web.

What I find more problematic, really, is the amount of copying that occurs online. Finding a hit on a paper copied extensively off the Web usually does not yield a single hit, but a collection of identical hits, most without any attribution to an original. Rather than referencing an article of interest they copy it so people will come to their site and see their ads, something a link out would not achieve. The number of ad driven sites on specific topics that survive by just cutting and pasting WIkipedia content (and a few other primary sources) is quite impressive.

Add to that textbook publishers deciding that undergraduate texts don’t need bibliographies because no one reads that part and it will only serve to confuse the students (read, it will save us having to print those 20 pages), and we begin to surround students with really bad examples of how to research topics and write about them.
wayne_detzler

Plagiarism is a bane of every professor’s existence, but I found the mother lode when teaching in Yunnan Province, China. Openly the students tried to copy from each other. they justified it as an act of mercy: “We just wanted to help each other pass.” Finally, albeit temporarily, we cracked the problem by separate desks in separate rooms.
idixon

The trick is to teach students that original thought still matters and not just getting a grade. Getting students to slow down and enjoy the academic journey will stop allot of this behavior.
jbarman

Wayne – interesting. I found the same cultural acceptance of plagiarism among students from the Middle East. The justification was “If I need something, my brother/friend/countryman is expected to help me”. That explained more than one paper submitted by someone from Riyadh about what it was like to grow up as a blue-eyed redhead in Minneapolis.
11122741

unfortunately originally thought is very close to no longer mattering
and that’s the problem which is why there is so little of it around now.
lostfreedoms61

…a lot?
lostfreedoms61

I think the only way I can avoid having my students plagiarize would be to make them hand write a paper in class with no written material in front of them. It is disheartening to grade papers when over half of them have plagiarized material, and a quarter were done so intentionally, not because of lack of knowledge regarding citing. I have to wonder if kids are learning anything in high school because they are so unprepared for college.
jffoster

And everything will all come out in the wash.
medievalartprof

Doesn’t your university have an academic dishonesty policy that would permit you to fail offenders on the assignment/in the class based on the percentage of the final grade allotted to that assignment?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-R-Moore/100001226270991 Michael R. Moore

I have recently queried colleagues at the American Library Association and academic librarians at two universities with this question: is there any evidence or data that suggests that there is more academic plagiarism now than there was, say, 15, 40, or 110 years ago?

Anecdotally, of course, plagiarism is one of the guaranteed fear inducers of contemporary academic culture. Due in large part to corporations such as turnitin.com—whose marketing strategy seems to be that they can both diagnose the disease and provide the cure—the culture of fear, anxiety, and mistrust toward students is palpable.

At any rate, I have been unable to locate data or evidence that suggests there is more academic plagiarism currently than there was, say, 15, 40, or 110 years ago. If you know of any, could you send me a citation? mmoore46@depaul.edu.

Thanks!
electronicmuse

Yeah, including their $10 000 degrees from out Texas way . . . (from a different post).
david_balch

Good points. Any technology has both advantages and a “dark side.”
I find that I can usually identify plagiarism but comparing the students writing within a paper and between their papers; style and level of difficulty..
My experience has been not that the student deliberately commits plagiarism but does it not knowing when, what, and how to give credit to sources.
I find a simple exercise in the classroom
* I have the students copy a page of a online publication
* and then use Google and one of the plagiarism programs to check it.

It is amazing what they find-with a not too subtle a hint about what I can find.
Yes, all of the colleges/universities I have taught for treat it very seriously; grade of F, dropped from the school, etc.
bryanalexander

“the software… will also flag legitimate stuff that is properly cited and attributed” – setting aside the plagiarism bit, is this a data point for students using social media in their research?
bryanalexander

Are content farms showing up in results?
Because the sources named are usually something other: Facebook, Myspace, Scribd, SlideShare, Yahoo Answers, and Answers.com, http://www.nih.gov, MedLibrary.org, Course Hero, BookRags, Wikipedia, OPPapers.com…
bangwash

I catch unattributed material regularly without using software. There is an ethical issue underlining this subject. Students who plagiarize give all the standard excuses; I think they must have an instruction manual for all their excuses. This is a behavior that reflects a disregard for ethical standards throughout our society. There are plenty of high profile role models that get daily coverage. Still, the moral of the stories seems to be, “don’t get caught” instead of “don’t do it.” There is no peer pressure discourage plagiarism. Instead peer pressure encourages students to pull one over on the professor. The reinforcement for this behavior is enormous and is amplified through the ingenuity of social media. If young people can be manipulated to commit suicide, sexting and murder with social media as an enabler then there is nothing or very little that is off limits. Popular culture has a very powerful influence over the interests and expectations of high school and college age kids and it is seamlessly incorporated into the programming of local news and newspapers and internet content. Political strategists use it effectively to propagate their messages to manipulate public opinion. So it is not surprising that plagiarism is flourishing. At times it is hard not to be cynical about it and to view students who plagiarize as cheaters and those who learn early to manipulate “the system” will grow up to be professional and political cheaters as well. Is this the kind of society we want or maybe it is in keeping with the hypocritical nature of the founding of our country? If so our young people have a wide array of reasons to scapegoat their behavior.
http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org Scott McLeod

1. Maybe as educators we should stop asking questions for which the answers are easily copied or Google-able.

2. For all those of you willing to point fingers at the younger generation, consider the words of Clay Shirky: “The people surprised at … new behaviors assume that behavior is a stable category, but it isn’t. Human motivations change little over the years, but opportunity can change a little or a lot, depending on the social environment. In a world where opportunity changes little, behavior will change little, but when opportunity changes a lot, behavior will as well.”

In other words, none of us wants to waste our time – it’s one of the most precious commodities we have – but in the past we didn’t have the same opportunities we have now. Are there more students without ethics and morals than before? Probably not. Other than the typical “older folks think the next generations are awful” shtick, we don’t have any conclusive evidence that the ethics and morality of today’s youth are any different than earlier generations. But their opportunities are different – and their exposure to the world is greater – which makes them less willing to complete assignments they see as worthless or irrelevant just because we say so. We also should note that much of what we call ‘cheating’ in education is ‘collaboration’ and ‘using the resources available to you’ in our students’ minds (and in the rest of the world).

Educating students on proper attribution in the realms of both printed text and the hyperconnected Web is a worthy goal, but let’s don’t overgeneralize to character and disposition.
kantopet

One one simple thing that can reduce (but admittedly not end) plagiarism is simply in how we have asked the question. Consider the following two phrasings of the same question:

You are to write a 600 word essay on plagiarism, the reasons people cheat, and what can be done to prevent it.

[or]

When you think of plagiarism, what does it mean to you? Have you ever considered cheating in class? Why? What are the benefits and dangers? How do you think the school should deal with those caught cheating? Try to give me at least 600 words explaining your views.

Here is the interesting part. The first question will get 400 words of stuff copied off the Internet. The second question will get 1000 words of students trying to sincerely express themselves. Not always, but the difference in the writing is tangible. Overall, I have found that asking students about their opinions and for feedback, instead of impersonal reporting on things, results in much better and more detailed assignments being handed in.
12080243

I found the same cultural acceptance of plagiarism among faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM). Several colleagues stumbled upon two instances of apparent plagiarism on the part of several faculty and administrators at the College of Business, USM. We informally asked for a discussion to see if we could have a meeting of minds about the apparent plagiarism. (Plagiarism is rarely cut and dry, as implied in the article.) Dean Harold Doty, President Martha Saunders et al refused. We then undertook efforts to open a discussion following the rules in our Faculty Handbook. They still refused to discuss their actions or follow the Faculty Handbook. Since the documents in question were part of submissions for reaccreditation, we asked the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business to encourage discussions and participate in a dialogue about the documents they received that were copied. They, too, refused. We learned through freedom of information requests that the involved administrators and faculty had, after we asked for a discussion, gotten permission to copy the documents “without proper citation”–their term. They did this to comply with reaccreditation requests from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. So, their approach to plagiarism was to get permission after getting caught. Getting permission, in their view and the AACSB’s, converted plagiarism to acceptable behavior. It is still relevant because one of the plagiarized documents was The Academic Integrity Policy taken without attribution from Syracuse University. The only part not copied by USM was the list of citations Syracuse University used to create its Academic Integrity Policy. And the School of Accountancy, USM, still represents Syracuse University’s Academic Integrity Policy “without proper citation” on its website. In my view, at a minimum, our university missed a wonderful learning opportunity. For details, see http://www.usmnews.net.

Chauncey M. DePree, Jr., DBA
Professor
School of Accountancy
College of Business
University of Southern Mississippi
phil_davis

We need to be clear about distinguishing “matched text” from “plagiarism,” since the study really only concerns itself with the further. See a lengthier comment at:
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2011/04/29/the-p-word/
medievalartprof

You have a good point about phrasing questions, except that your samples are not, in the end, the same questions. The first is a research question, which asks students to locate and analyze information. The second is an opinion question, which requires no research.

If one’s learning goals include guiding students to enter into a conversation with the ideas of others — i.e., to act like scholars — then one cannot simply assign essays that ask for opinions informed only by personal opinion and reflection.
bangwash

The consequences of plagiarism are not strong enough to prevent it. That is why we are having this conversation. Our concern as instructors has to do with the difficulty in evaluating and grading someone’s work that is not entirely their own or not their own at all. All the issues of “time” and “collaboration,” etc. are, with all do respect, irrelevant because they are not included within the parameters of grading unless they are specifically enumerated as factors upon which a grade is determined. What we are asking students to do is produce “original” work. That is the common denominator. If we create a grey area we are either making excuses or we may have something to hide as well. The production of “original” work is the critical point because it is related to the argument for the existence of the humanities. If, as instructors, we think of ourselves as critical thinkers, then inherent to discharging our professorship duties is the encouragement of that cognitive function. Those students who either have no respect for or interest in this degrade the process of education, but this reflective of the broader trends in our social priorities. Consider how the Congressional fight over the budget affects the attitudes of students. The numbers of student whose apathy hardens toward politics will vary among colleges and universities, but what we want to know is the extent to which there is a parallel between the attitudes about the budget fight (as one example) and students attitudes about plagiarism. Although it may not be universal I’ll bet that there is a correlation between reality shows and process of critical thinking. Original work, if that is what we ask students to produce, is not possible without critical thinking. In the business world original work is patented and copy written. Plagiarism is the academic equivalent of copyright and patent infringement.
kantopet

True, or at least partly true. Until students have proven themselves capable of personal opinion and reflection, asking them to critically reflect on the words of others often results in works that fail to address the “critically” and “on” bits. Which is to say, I get a room full of perniciously plagiarizing parrots who don’t even have alliteration on their side.

When I ask for opinions, I find I don’t have to tell students to engage with the ideas of others. Most of them simply do just that. If for no other reason than to bolster their arguments against the evil professor who might think less of them for thinking out of turn. It is also an amazingly effective way to find out what students are taking away from my classes by observing what students say in the “tell the professor what they want to hear” component of the work.

However, what might enlighten the point as to where the two versions converge is my failure to include the last sentence I would have included in either case. “Provide three sources that either support or refute your arguments.” (“Sources? But this isn’t a comp class!” they all cry in unison.)

And really, I don’t want them to act like anything except themselves. Acting like scholars is a pretty useless skill for most of them after they graduate. What I do want them to do is to learn how to be open, observant, flexible, and inquisitive so that they can be better prepared for a world that requires constant learning and adaptation to succeed.
lostfreedoms61

It is a community college in an extremely impoverished area. Most students can barely read, let alone write. I worked to get prerequisites of reading and English for the upcoming year for my social science classes, and they are now a requirement. That should help tremendously. Of course, the English teachers say that it doesn’t get much better even after the student’s go through the remedial courses. The lack of ability is sad to see sometimes, but every once and a while, that one bright student comes through and gives you hope.
medievalartprof

Thanks, kantopet, for your thoughtful reply. You sound like an effective and dedicated teacher.
medievalartprof

Best of luck, lostfreedoms61. I hope your prereqs do help.
missoularedhead

Do you think that perhaps the ‘rise’ in plagiarism is a function of more of it being caught through technology (either an aggregate site such as turnitin or SafeAssign, or simply google)? I believe that might be the case.
I say this because I remember a professor catching a case when I was an undergrad (in the dark ages!) because the words seemed familiar. Turns out the student plagiarized from the professor’s own book.
vceross

what are content farms?
vceross

What should be evaluated is the relationship between the assignment and the likelihood of plagiarism. Many research writing assignments are carelessly designed, with little thought to the amount of knowledge, work, thought, context, time — as well as audience and purpose — of the assignment. It isn’t just technology that has changed and promoted plagiarism; it’s also a change in how professors go about assigning papers and interacting with their students. My undergraduate professors put together well-considered assignments that took into account how much students could reasonably know or care about the topics, and how much work and knowledge would be entailed in acquitting the assignment. I have seen writing assignments from various faculty that were unrealistic in their expectations (often handed to students days before the papers are due), some that were clearly dashed off by an instructor, tortuously written and sometimes two or three pages in length so that, by the end, one hasn’t a clue what the instructor seeks or which of the battery of questions one must address. At the other end of the spectrum, professors may ask for lengthy research papers based on a vague two-sentence prompt. In turn, digital technology has prompted breathtakingly complicated, time-consuming research projects that limit if not eliminate the possibility of plagiarism (for now) but make it difficult for students to do their work in other classes.

Which leads me to the second point: I wonder how much more work students are now required to do than they were a few decades ago. I know that elementary and high school students are doing far more homework than in years past, and I suspect the same is true of college students. When you overwork people, something has to give.
bryanalexander

Businesses which build up lots of Google-friendly content, created by very low paid creators. Demand Media is one.
Some controversy recently about Google possibly being gamed by them.
vceross

thanks!
toddconaway

This is excellent marketing from the Chronicle for iParadigms. Good thing the report came from unbiased source.

“A report on the findings was released today by iParadigms, creator of Turnitin, a popular plagiarism-detection service that takes uploaded student papers and checks them against various databases to pinpoint unoriginal content.”
http://www.club-admiralty.com/ foveros

So in other words, a company that produces a plagiarism detection tool (which actually isn’t plagiarism detection since it also flags appropriately cited content) created a study that shows that plagiarism is social; since social is expanding, ergo plagiarism is probably expanding? I’m glad we have such an unbiased source!

For what it’s worth I think turnitin’s model is great for them, people pay them to run a text checker, and then they not only get money from people who run text files through the engine, but also get to keep people’s work (without paying money to them) so they can check against it in the future.

Plagiarism, and the underlying principle of efficiency, has been around for a long time. We just have better tools to detect it. Instead of using these tools punitively (and paying for them in the process), it’s better to apprentice students into the academic discourse that we obviously want them to be conversant in. They won’t pick it up by osmosis, let’s train them to do it right and convince them to buy into the reasons why we cite.
http://twitter.com/Mollybad Molly B.

Thank you for that edit. This Web site forum should not require any.
squacky

Thank you for writing this. I’d add one more point of concern: Organizing first-generation students into first-generation spaces, even if it’s by choice, imposes a social identity on students that is largely constructed by students and others in other spaces. Put simply, living in a “first-generation” space on campus could unwittingly marginalize first-generation students when their peers figure out all sorts of unkind ways to talk about them.
11179102

I gently disagree. First-generation college students in rural states may or may not receive support from their friends and families “back home.” And even if the friends and families hope the student succeeds, that does not mean they know how to provide the support needed.

And many of these students know that, by attending college, they will never return home to stay. The jobs they are being educated for are not likely to be located in the rural hamlets. That places a lot of pressure on everyone involved as ”family ties” are of great value by culture. One cannot overestimate this homegrown sense that “your education will take you away from us forever.” (And in a sense, it is correct).

These first year living programs offer the opportunity for such students to draw support and encouragement from each other – and to learn skills from campus professionals that the rest of the student population learned from their families and high schools.

Finally, as far as a “marked” identitity, the residential program is only for the first year. At a landgrant school the size of the University of Kentucky, one would think a sophomore student would still have ample time and could choose to live in such a manner that he/she could still “bond” and network with a variety of students in a variety of settings – through the major, clubs and organizations, etc.
raymond_j_ritchie

In Australia we do not have a residency requirement in universities. Most students simply live at home and commute or live in a cheap flat. Many PhD students still live at home: I did. College accomodation is generally for overseas students and students who have lived most of their lives in boarding schools and often have little connection with their parents (in English upper class style).
I am a first generation graduate & PhD. I think segregation of first generation university students is inherently a bad idea. It will create more problems than it solves. First generation students have all sorts of problems in socialisation due to a simple lack of money and resources. Other students make assumptions about resources of their classmates that do not cover your circumstances. You cannot go on a quick ski-trip weekend or to a restuarant with the rest of the class for a “mere” $300 a head.
katisumas

Richar Kahlenberg, thank you for your work on economically disadvantaged students. I too think that economic class should be the basis for affirmative action and that first generation college students need specific help.

However like you I agree that segregating first generation freshmen in one dorm is a very bad idea.
larissaennis

I appreciate your thoughtful response to Lacey Johnson’s article. But I agree with 11179102 and also “gently disagree” with your position. As a first generation student from a poor and rural family, I believe I would have greatly benefited from a first-generation dorm for the first year of my undergraduate studies. Your point that economically disadvantaged students will lose opportunities for networking is, I think, misguided: for the first year of university, most students are simply getting their bearings, learning how to study, and navigating the potentially intimidating territory of university life. It is far above the abilities of many students, regardless of social class, to make meaningful connections for future employment at this stage of collegiate work. Further, those students who are sophisticated enough to establish potentially useful social networks that will lead to employment or social advantages down the line very often do so as part of sororities and fraternities–almost by default (because of both cost and the social elitism of most residential Greek systems) middle- and upper-class students whose parents also successfully navigated these channels and can provide guidance.Many first generation students arrive on campus with no idea of how the university works, and finding one’s way around campus–and especially finding resources appropriate to their needs–is already daunting. A dorm where these types of information were made not simply available but *normal* could provide a much-needed sense of safety in the always humbling and sometimes (for those accustomed to the embarrassment of food stamps, AFDC, and simply being poor) completely demoralizing act of reaching out for help. One year in a dormitory socializing students to university life in a supportive environment, where they aren’t the silent and unacknowledged economic minority, could do a world of good. Anecdotally, as a first-year student at a land-grant state university, I was housed with an upper-class sorority member whose life experiences were night and day compared to mine. I spent that first semester feeling ashamed of my (extremely limited) wardrobe, my regional speech patterns, and my obvious poverty. The only thing I gained was a palpable sense of relief when she moved out to live in her sorority for the second semester. And without a centralized support structure, I *never* learned that there was an office specifically geared towards students from lower-class backgrounds at my university. Had I known, I absolutely would have taken advantage of the services.
dwlang

I’ve been working with a first-generation undergraduate group on my campus (a large, selective, public university with 13% first-gens) for nearly four years. Too many colleges like mine fail to openly recognize the fact that thousands of students are first in their families to attend college. This compounds difficulties for first-gens especially during the first year of college when they often feel invisible. My university rightly celebrates diversity efforts, but this leaves many (perhaps most) first-gens struggling – especially if they’re feeling disconnected from family and/or community that may or may not be celebrating their upward mobility efforts.

Many families worry about their children roaming so far from “home.” What will become of them in a very different middle class world as they acquire new values and world views? Will these parents literally loose touch with children during college or afterwards as they travel here and there to pursue careers and lives. Will siblings who stay close to home lose touch with brothers and sisters they grew up with? Who knows they may even marry someone born to the middle class! And then there will be those middle class grandchildren/nephews/nieces.

These type of concerns (often related to family) weigh heavily on first-gens as they start college. Many look for safe places where they can talk about these (and other unique first-gen) issues. Colleges that openly recognize that these concerns are real can positively influence success over a four year period and first-gen students are more likely to feel integrated into the mainstream experience. They are more likely to succeed academically and socially. They are more likely to not be ashamed of their more modest backgrounds. And more importantly they can embrace their dual identities as signs of strength and survival.

This is especially important during the first-year when a new sense of self begins to take root. This does not mean that first-gens – who are usually very talented and resourceful – will shy away of networking around campus – in multiple settings – over the years. Rather a secure first-gen identity openly established in the first year of college may strengthen an ability to successfully balance past, present and future, Being first-gen will probably be less of a stigma in a society/culture that too often denies the existence of social class or claims it does not matter.

In my view a first-gen/first-year dorm experience – for those who choose it – can be a very good thing and is the right thing to do.
rick1952

Dr. Kahlenberg: Like many others, I have read and followed your work in recent years with great appreciation and with great respect. I was first generation. I did not attend a large, land-grant institution; instead I attended a small, “eastern selective” as the top tier undergraduate colleges were referred to during the 1970′s and 80′s.

I have mixed feelings about this proposal – on the one hand, I believe it is imperative that first generation students receive appropriate levels of support and orientation to college. On that matter, I believe we are in agreement. Whether or not a residence hall specifically designated for First Generation students is helpful or detrimental to their ability to gain the greatest benefit from being on campus is an open question, one whose answer depends strongly on the individual. For some of us, having a place to which we can “retreat” is important as we transition from one demographic category to another. For others of us, “jumping in full-fledged” is more appropriate. For that reason, I think we should reserve judgment about the value of this residential experience at the U of KY or any other institution that tries out this type of living arrangement. I think we need to continue to learn more about what can help students achieve the greatest benefit based on their developmental readiness (yes, I am a psychologist by training) for different types of living and learning environments.

I think your commentary raises several valid concerns and highlights the paradox or irony of the situation. We recognize the need for special services to support first generation students but we also want to be sure they are integrated into the campus community as if they were no different than anyone else so that they can maximize the acquistion of “cultural and social capital” offered by colleges. That was the paradox we struggled with in terms of race when I was in college during the 1970′s. Both then and now, the often unspoken assumption about students like us was that we were “in need” as opposed to being “capable.”

Perhaps part of the difficulty is that we imagine all first generation students are relatively the same, that is, that we share the same talents and deficiencies in roughly the same degree. The academy once thought that all African-American and Hispanic students were relatively similar in that same way. Yet, my experience shows me that there is diversity within any demographic cohort and it is for that reason that I believe we should view the residence hall as one option among several to support first generation students.

When all is said and done, as I indicated in a post to the original article, it is important to think in terms of what we can do to improve the student educational experience as we learn from what works and what does not work. For my part, I am willing to support the idea of a residence hall for first generation students as long as it is voluntary and has clear, structured programming (rather than relying on “black box” impact.) While it may change the way it occurs, I don’t think that will undercut the arguments you have advanced in support of greater socio-economic diversity on college campuses.
Brian Abel Ragen

I think we need less segregation on campus, not more. Students who belong to various groups–ranging from minorities to athletes–are kept from mixing with other students by coaches and student affairs and residential life officials. The students then of course feel isolated, which justifies more action on the part of the officials–and thus their jobs. The coaches find that athletes undistracted by other interests focus more on the all important business of sports. The people who create segregated programs may be well-intended, but I fear they keep students from becoming fully part of the community a college is supposed to be.

Also, I think we should question whether being a “first-generation” college student is really such a handicap. Several of my department colleagues are the first in their families to attend college, as were several of my classmates at an Ivy League graduate school. None of them have ever thought that those of us whose parents went college had any great advantage. (Of course, we were not talking about admission to elite institutions.) All students whose parents want them to succeed in college have an advantage over those whose parents are indifferent: those groups do not line up with those whose parents went to college and those whose parents didn’t.
rick1952

barstl – in theory I would tend to agree with you about the need to not segregate students on campus via special programs. In practice, however,I find that segregation occurs whether we like it or not from a philosophical perspective. What I believe is helpful is to work with what occurs and try to shape it in productive ways. Identifying student cohorts based on certain shared characteristics is not inherently wrong or problematic – it is what is done when the demographic cohort is identified that can be problematic.

So, if coaches were expected to use their ability to influence the group that will naturally form (athletic team members are among the most group-member oriented cohorts I have experienced on each campus at which I have worked) so that the group becomes more open to interacting with others, then we could see more integration of student populations than might naturally occur. And, yes, I recognize this is an idealistic notion but none-the-less, one we ought to consider promoting.

The same can be argued for efforts to work with first generation students (and, I agree, being a first generation student is not an inherent handicap but it does come with a lack of some social/cultural capital that can reduce for some students their ability to maximize the benefit of their college experience.) Again, if the directors of such programs work with the students to build up their capacity to reach out beyond their comfort zones, that can enhance interaction that might not otherwise occur. I think it is more about how we envision and carry out these programs and efforts than the fact that we conduct them.
theatheist

For goodness sake, colleagues. Theories about class will not resolve this question. Anecdotes about your personal experience will not will resolve this question. That’s because it’s an EMPIRICAL question, and as scholars you should all know that. When this idea has been tried for a few years, facts will emerge. It will either show some merit, or it won’t.

As to the ethics of trying the experiment in the first place, I notice several things. One, participation is voluntary. Two, if indeed there is some deleterious effect, it will hardly be catastrophic. Kentucky is not exactly playing with eugenics or urban housing projects. Three, the experiment is being tried at a single dorm at a single university. If a hundred universities subscribed to an untried technique like this, I would be very concerned. So far as I know, that’s not happening.
pianiste

Theatheist is correct, of course, but within certain parameters of what reason and a bit of imagination can foretell.

Say a single university in Kentucky said it was going to try out a program in which freshmen who were at least third-generation college students and/or who’d been raised by parents with graduate degrees and more than $150,000 household income would be housed in a separate dorm, in order to provide those students with a better environment–unencumbered by those who couldn’t quite keep up–for success. Advance criticism of such a program couldn’t really be deflected by “When this idea has been tried for a few years, facts will emerge. It will either show some merit or it won’t.”

Reason and a little imagination will tell one that not everything should be instituted, funded, and administered so that it’ll be an empirical matter.

Whatever happened to those Black Power dorms?