This post shares a case study I wrote for EDD 837: DEIJ in Higher Education, a doctoral course focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in higher education. The assignment asked us to examine the challenges facing Central Valley University, a fictional mid-sized public institution struggling to retain the low-income students it has worked hard to recruit. It is worth noting that this assignment came with a strict page limit following APA 7 formatting guidelines, so the analysis is intentionally focused and touches the surface of what is a much deeper and more nuanced topic.
I examine what barriers are preventing low-income student success, how institutions can build infrastructure that is genuinely navigable rather than just technically available, and what role faculty, staff, and peers play in fostering an equitable experience. The case study draws on peer-reviewed research and my own experience as a first-generation college student and higher education professional to argue that access alone is not enough. Getting students through the door means nothing if the systems, attitudes, and support structures inside were never designed with them in mind.
Introduction
Central Valley University has done something genuinely meaningful by expanding access and recruitment for low-income students. But there is much more work to be done to address the socioeconomic needs of low-income students which is why the university is struggling with low-income student retention. Students arriving from low-income backgrounds bring frameworks shaped by their actual social experiences, and those frameworks often differ from the assumptions baked into university life. When the environment they enter was designed around a different set of norms, the connection does not happen automatically. This paper examines three questions that follow from CVU's situation: what barriers are preventing low-income student success; how the university can build infrastructure to support these students academically and socially; and what role faculty, staff, and peers should play in fostering an equitable experience.
Barriers Preventing Student Success
The most immediate barriers are material. Food insecurity, housing instability, and limited technology access are real and well-documented challenges. Williams et al. (2024) found that food insecurity simultaneously undermines academic performance, peer engagement, and sense of belonging. Campus food pantries, emergency housing resources, and technology assistance programs are a necessary starting point, but they are not a solution on their own. The material needs are visible. The cultural and social barriers underneath them are where the harder work begins.
A less obvious but equally significant barrier is the stigma surrounding poverty itself, and the way that stigma gets internalized. American culture's dominant narrative frames economic hardship as a personal failing and success as the product of individual effort and self-reliance. Manstead (2018) found that working-class individuals frequently absorb and endorse the very ideological frameworks that work against their own interests, a pattern deeply rooted in neoliberal bootstrapping culture. On campus, that internalization shows up as reluctance to seek help, shame around financial need, and a tendency to read structural barriers as personal shortcomings. Chin et al. (2024) found that low-income college students actively conceal their economic backgrounds from peers and faculty, managing stigma through silence rather than accessing support. That concealment is a meaningful barrier to persistence, and no service addresses it if students are too ashamed to use it.
There is also the matter of institutional knowledge that never gets formally transmitted. Multi-generation students often arrive knowing how to navigate office hours, appeal a financial aid decision, or decode an academic syllabus because someone in their family already did it. First-generation students frequently have to figure those things out alone, often after the gap has already cost them something financially or academically (Axxe et al., 2025).
Building an Infrastructure to Support Students Academically and Socially
Effective infrastructure has to be built around where students actually are. Landry et al. (2024) found that stigma and limited awareness are the primary barriers to students engaging with available support. A student who connects asking for help with shame will not use a food pantry, unless the campus addresses the social constructs that shame students for seeking out these resources. This social construct needs to be addressed head on. A centralized resource hub that consolidates food access, emergency housing support, technology resources, and financial navigation is a meaningful structural investment. Kreniske et al. (2023) found that campus climate and access to community are among the strongest predictors of resilience for low-income, first-generation students. That kind of community has to be built holistically, not just technically or structurally.
But infrastructure is only as good as its navigability. For a student who has never navigated complex institutional systems, being told that help exists is not the same as being helped. Knowing that a housing resource is available somewhere on the university website is not the same as having someone walk you through finding emergency placement with an eviction on your record. The complexity of these systems is its own barrier, and it operates on two levels. The first is human. Arena et al. (2024) found that embedded, case management-style support significantly reduces the cognitive load on students by consolidating help into a single point of contact rather than sending students through a maze of disconnected offices, forms, and eligibility requirements. CVU should invest in dedicated student success navigators, essentially case managers with deep knowledge of both campus and community resources, who can meet students where they are and walk them through the process. The second is design. Resource hubs have to be built around the assumption that students may be encountering these systems for the very first time. A link to a FAFSA application is not helpful to a student who does not know what FAFSA is. Plain language, clear guidance, and no assumption of prior knowledge are not nice-to-haves. They are the difference between a resource that exists and a resource that actually gets used.
The Role of Faculty, Staff, and Peers
Faculty, staff, and peers are not outside the support system; they are part of it, and how they show up shapes whether that system functions or fails for any individual student. The choices faculty make about what they assume, what they reference, and what they treat as baseline normal tell students every day whether they belong in that room. Bauer et al. (2025) found that treating low-income students as people who bring something valuable, rather than students who need to be fixed, produced real improvements in outcomes. Some faculty genuinely get this. Others operate on a sink-or-swim model, whether they realize it or not. A student who struggles with writing, or who is not fluent in basic software tools, or who clearly had a harder road to the classroom than their peers is not a problem. They are a person dealing with systemic inequalities that did not disappear when they enrolled. In instructional design, we talk about KASA: Knowledge, Awareness, Skills, and Attitude. Most professional development hits the first three. In my experience, attitude is the one that almost never gets addressed directly. And it does not stop at the classroom door; faculty need to be aware of this.
Staff in advising and student affairs face the same challenge. They are often the first to notice a student pulling back, which makes early alert systems and proactive outreach essential. But how that disengagement gets interpreted matters just as much as whether it gets noticed. Low-income students who withdraw are frequently trying to reconcile their actual lives with a set of institutional expectations that were not built with their circumstances in mind. Staff who understand that respond very differently than those who read it as apathy. The case manager model only works if the people inside it actually want to meet students where they are, not just move them through a process.
Peers also have a role to play, and it is more practical than it might seem. Employing low-income students in the very offices designed to support them, campus resource hubs, case management offices, food pantries, and advising centers, creates a workforce that understands the population it serves while also providing meaningful income and professional experience to students who need both. Peer mentoring programs that connect incoming low-income students with upper-division peers from similar backgrounds serve a similar function: they put someone in the room who has already navigated the system and is willing to explain it. No program or brochure replaces hearing it from someone who has actually been there.
Conclusion
Low-income students at CVU face barriers that are both material and social: food and housing insecurity, the internalized stigma of a culture that treats poverty as a personal failure, and the invisible knowledge gaps that multi-generation students may never have to think about. Addressing those barriers requires infrastructure that is not just available but genuinely navigable, with dedicated human support that meets students where they are rather than expecting them to find their way through a maze on their own. And the faculty, staff, and peers closest to these students have to show up with the right attitude, not just the right resources. CVU has done the hard work of opening the door. The next step is making sure students can actually walk through it.
References
Arena, C., Butera, R.-A., & Perl, E. (2024). Promoting student success and retention through care teams and case management at small institutions. New Directions for Student Services, 2024, 77–88. https://doi.org/10.1002/ss.20538Axxe, E., Whiteside, J. L., Roscigno, V. J., & McDaniel, A. (2025). First-generation inequalities, adaptation, and resilience. Sociological Forum, 40, 465–480. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.70002
Bauer, C. A., Walton, G., Job, V., & Stephens, N. M. (2025). The strengths of people in low-SES positions: An identity-reframing intervention improves low-SES students' achievement over one semester. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 16(1), 45–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506241284806
Chin, M. Y., Jeffries, J., & Thompson, M. N. (2024). The impact of downward classism on social class concealment among college students who are low-income. Journal of College Student Development, 65(3), 316–320. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2024.a929245
Kreniske, P., Mellins, C. A., Shea, E., Walsh, K., Wall, M., Santelli, J. S., Reardon, L., Khan, S., & Hirsch, J. S. (2023). Associations between low-household income and first-generation status with college student belonging, mental health, and well-being. Emerging Adulthood, 11(3), 710–720. https://doi.org/10.1177/21676968221124649
Landry, M. J., Hagedorn-Hatfield, R. L., & Zigmont, V. A. (2024). Barriers to college student food access: A scoping review examining policies, systems, and the environment. Journal of Nutritional Science, 13, e51. https://doi.org/10.1017/jns.2024.25
Manstead, A. S. R. (2018). The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts thought, feelings, and behaviour. British Journal of Social Psychology, 57(2), 267–291. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12251
Williams, B. M., Thompson, D. J., Ardoin, S., & Brooks, A. (2024). A content analysis of qualitative research on college student food insecurity in the United States. Review of Education, 12, e3454. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3454