Senior leaders source institutional priorities from an ever-growing list of opportunities and challenges. Advocates of each potential priority work to ensure it lands on an institution’s agenda and rises to the top.

While leaders have numerous initiatives they’d like to support, resource limitations require them to make tough choices. With institutional budget strain likely to increase, the competition for priority placement on senior leaders’ agendas and institutional resources will only intensify.

As student success advocates, we must ensure leadership prioritizes first-gen student success. The 35-point completion gap between first-gen and continuing-gen students isn’t just an unfortunate reality—it’s a problem demanding action.

Political scientists distinguish between “conditions” and “problems.” Conditions are undesirable circumstances stakeholders are willing to tolerate. Problems, however, are circumstances leaders recognize as urgent enough to address.

To #AdvocateFirstGen, student success champions must convince senior leaders that the completion gap is a problem. Advocates must leverage data, stories, collective action, and peer examples to make the case for prioritizing first-gen student success.

Data

Advocates should use national, state, and institutional data to highlight the completion gap’s size. Our latest fact sheet shows first-gen students are 35% less likely to graduate within six years than their continuing-gen peers. It also shows that just 24% of first-gen students graduate within six years. These data points demonstrate the completion gap is wide enough to warrant institutional intervention.

Advocates should also use data to monitor changes that could indicate the completion gap may widen. Research suggests early momentum metrics are predictive of first-gen student success. If metrics like first- to second-year retention or first-year credit completion ratio decrease, a decrease in first-gen degree completion is likely to follow. Advocates can use changes in these and other indicators to convince leadership to invest in first-gen-focused programs.

Stories

While data is helpful for demonstrating a problem’s scope, stories are invaluable for demonstrating a problem’s impact. Stories can be particularly compelling when presented to decision makers who share characteristics, such as first-gen status, with those impacted.

Advocates should leverage opportunities like the First-Generation College Celebration to collect student stories that reinforce narratives emerging from data analyses. Advocates should identify creative ways to engage first-gen students in advocacy campaigns targeting decision makers. If students cannot participate in presentations, consider recording students as they tell their stories or incorporating students’ quotes and pictures into your reports to senior leaders.

Collective Action

Decision makers are much more likely to classify a condition as a problem if multiple stakeholders identify it as one. Advocates must therefore mobilize a diverse coalition of first-gen champions to ensure decision makers prioritize this population’s success.

Advocates should encourage all who are impacted by the completion gap to share data, stories, and impact statements with key decision makers. While student voices should always drive advocacy efforts, mobilizing faculty and staff from across your institution can help capture leadership’s attention by demonstrating the problem’s scope. 

Advocates should also connect with community and business leaders who have relationships with your institution. If employers who recruit from your institution or sponsor initiatives express an interest in hiring more first-gen college graduates, leadership may be more likely to invest in initiatives promoting their success.

Peer Examples

Comparisons are a particularly powerful tool for advocates working to secure resources to promote first-gen student success. This is especially true when a comparison reveals that one’s institution lags behind peers with whom it competes in either outcomes or investment.

Leadership may tolerate a low first-gen graduation rate if it aligns with the national first-gen graduation rate or exceeds the rate reported by peers. However, leadership is unlikely to tolerate this condition if their institution is underperforming in this category. As competition to enroll this crucial population increases, unfavorable comparisons to regional peers become more persuasive to those responsible for allocating institutional resources. For this reason, advocates should frequently compare institutional first-gen outcomes to national data.

Bringing It All Together

By leveraging data, stories, collective action, and peer examples, you can demonstrate that the 35-point completion gap between first- and continuing-gen students is a problem your leadership must promptly allocate resources to address. Work with your fellow first-gen champions to gather these elements into a concise issue brief so you are prepared to #AdvocateFirstGen during your next meeting with key decision makers.