I was in my mid 20s the first time I bought a car from a dealership. I was terrified. Not of the car. Of the process. I had no idea what I was doing and absolutely no confidence that I had any business being in that building. When they told me I was approved, my first thought was that they made a mistake. So I said yes to everything, signed as fast as I could, and got out of there before they figured it out. I drove home convinced that at some point the phone was going to ring and someone was going to tell me there had been an error. I was in my mid 20s and I could not believe a car dealership approved me for a loan. That moment says everything about where I was by the time most middle class kids graduate with their bachelor degree. And it had almost nothing to do with the car.
I grew up very blue collar in a working class family, ironically, in one of the wealthiest towns in Connecticut. Though there is of course an asterisk to that statement, as I grew up in public housing. Let me tell you, the world I lived in versus the world most of my classmates lived in was far from the same world. We were galaxies apart in lifestyles despite living, in some cases, only a few roads apart. That contrast alone is its own lifetime of processing. My bedroom for the first sixteen years of my life was roughly ten by ten feet, maybe smaller -- it was tiny. But I loved it. It was mine. My space, my world, my paradise. To this day I look back at that life, growing up in that tiny home with two sisters and my parents, and just think to myself we had nothing, and we had everything.
Eventually, I found my way to college. I was the first in my family to ever step foot on a campus. People love to slap that "first-gen" label on you and celebrate it like it is some grand, triumphant victory. And truth be told, I do take great pride in being a first-gen college student and graduate. But what you often do not hear is what it actually feels like to be one. It was far from some magical, wonderful experience full of accolades and accomplishment. It was terrifying, isolating, and deeply confusing for a large portion of it. I missed out on so much of what college is supposed to be. I never went to a single campus event. Never joined a club. I did not even know what a sorority was. I did not form real relationships with other students, partly because I did not live on campus, but mostly because I never felt like I belonged there. Those things were for other people. People who fit in. People who had the financial means to grant them those experiences. I spent years feeling like an imposter who had accidentally wandered onto campus, ended up in a classroom I did not belong in, and somehow did not get thrown out. I did not know how to talk to professors. They felt like gatekeepers to a world I was not supposed to have access to. I did not know what office hours were. I did not understand the labyrinth of financial aid, let alone what a credit score meant, how to read a lease, or how to advocate for myself.
You see, when you grow up in a working class environment, you grow up in a system that somehow rejects the notion of authority while also being very autocratic. You seldom ask questions. You do what you are told, because usually not doing so meant consequences. So how on earth do I advocate for myself? How do I navigate a world where people use words like Dean, Professor, Provost, President? Listen, 21 year old Beej worked at Pizza Hut. The fanciest title I ever heard before that point was Restaurant General Manager. Oh, I need to apply for FAFSA? What on earth is that? What is an interest rate? A loan? I am signing these papers as fast as I can, terrified that if I do not I lose everything. Future me can figure this all out. Well, here is future me now. I did figure it all out. Painfully. It cost me time and money I can never get back as a result of having no system in place for people like me. The hardest part was not just that I lacked the answers. It was that I did not even know what questions to ask. You cannot ask for a lifeline when you do not even have the words to describe how you are drowning.
I made it through. I got degrees. I got jobs. I entered white collar professional spaces. And then I sat in office meetings surrounded by people a decade or more older than me talking about their homes and their kids and their wine and cheese book club gatherings, and I had my love of pro wrestling and video games and rock music, and I had absolutely nothing to offer to those conversations. I did not belong there and I knew it. I was convinced they knew it too. That feeling did not go away. My sense of identity suffered well into my 30s. The shame about where I came from. The second guessing. The imposter syndrome that followed me from job to job. I had zero social capital and I did not even have language for that yet. I just knew that other people moved through the world with a confidence I could not access and had no idea how to find. I was about 34 before everything started to click and make sense to me. I earned my first master's degree and started to understand, with real confidence, who I was, where I came from, and for the most part, how to navigate a system not designed for me. I gained the confidence to not care that I had different interests than the people I worked with, and I gained the confidence to speak my mind and push back when I felt it was necessary. No more blind compliance, but finally, a career professional. By most measures I was about ten years behind the kids I grew up alongside in that wealthy town. But I did it.
So here is what this blog post is really about. Today, sort of out of nowhere, I had an epiphany. And when that happens I do what I always do. I put words to keyboard. For those who do not follow my blog regularly, I am now pursuing an EdD in Educational Leadership for Social Justice. Before I even started the program I had a rough concept for my dissertation centered on introversion bias in online education. As an introvert I have spent my whole career navigating spaces that treat my personality as a liability or overlook it entirely. And let me tell you, I get genuinely, flippantly irate when I hear faculty dismiss online education as a lesser form of learning. Because I know exactly what that dismissal means. Online learning for many people is a space where they could finally show up and actually be heard and feel like they belong. My second master's degree was entirely online and it was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life, in large part because the digital environment allows me to express myself in ways I simply cannot in person. So when a faculty member waves that off, they are telling those students their voice does not matter, their needs do not matter, and that no one cares how they learn. Infuriating!
But here is the epiphany. My sense of identity has always been the real engine underneath all of this. I just was not looking at the deepest layer of it. For a while I incorrectly took what I felt as a social class straddler and attributed it to my introversion. The not fitting in, the exhaustion, the feeling of performing in spaces that were not built for me. While being an introvert in an extroverted world certainly comes with its own challenges, my introversion was not the core of what I was feeling. Every room I walked into as a professional, I was carrying public housing with me. I was carrying a car dealership I was terrified to be in. I was carrying every office meeting where I sat there with nothing to contribute to conversations I had no frame of reference for. That feeling did not come from being an introvert. It came from crossing class lines and never quite belonging on either side of them. Higher education sold me a path up. I took it and I am glad I did. But the crossing costs something. It cost me most of my 20s and a chunk of my 30s just trying to figure out who I was.
I am a constructivist. That means I believe your story is evidence. My story is evidence. The person who sat in that wrong-feeling office meeting, who signed those car dealership papers in a panic, who lay awake wondering if they actually belonged where they had worked so hard to get, that person's lived experience matters. Everything I just described -- the shame, the confusion, the imposter syndrome that follows you for years, the financial illiteracy, the cultural whiplash, are lived experiences of so many people who deserve to have their voices and experiences amplified, their stories told, their voices heard. I am still figuring out where my research goes from here. But the direction is becoming clear. I want to study what it actually costs a person to cross class lines through higher education. The identity confusion. The social capital deficit. The years of feeling like a stranger in every room. And I want to study it by centering the voices of the people who lived it, across community colleges and four year institutions alike, because that experience does not look the same everywhere and it does not end at graduation. For a long time I did not feel like my voice belonged in the room, that I didn't have a voice. I am not building a research agenda that makes someone else feel that way. No. Voices will be the center of this entire dissertation.
For those unfamiliar with doctoral research, three foundational pieces anchor any dissertation: a problem statement, a purpose statement, and research questions. Everything else, the design, the methods, the analysis, builds from those. I want to share where my thinking is right now, with the full acknowledgment that these are rough. They are a starting point. I will be working closely with my advisor and the faculty of my EdD program to sharpen and refine them as my research develops. But this is where I am today, and I think putting it into words is part of figuring it out.
Working Title
Problem Statement
First-generation college students from working-class and low-income backgrounds face persistent disparities in persistence, belonging, and degree completion relative to their more economically advantaged peers. While financial and academic barriers have received significant attention in the literature, the psychosocial dimensions of social class mobility through higher education remain underexplored. Students navigating class mobility frequently experience disruptions to identity, social capital deficits, cultural displacement, and internalized shame that extend well beyond the college years. Institutional support systems across both community colleges and four-year universities have been designed primarily around academic and financial needs, with limited attention to the identity-level experience of crossing class lines. This gap in research and institutional practice represents a significant equity concern, particularly given higher education's role as the primary pathway to upward social mobility in the United States.
Purpose Statement
The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the lived experiences of first-generation, working-class students as they navigate social class mobility through higher education. Grounded in a constructivist framework, this study centers participant voices across community college and four-year institutional settings to develop a deeper understanding of the identity, psychosocial, and systemic dimensions of the class mobility experience. Findings will inform institutional systems, policies, and leadership practices that more equitably support this population.
Research Questions
Central Question: How do first-generation, working-class college students describe their experience of navigating social class mobility through higher education?
Sub-questions:
- How do participants describe the impact of the class mobility experience on their identity and sense of self?
- What systemic barriers do participants identify as shaping their experience in higher education?
- What institutional structures, relationships, or practices do participants describe as supportive or harmful to their development?
- How do these experiences compare across community college and four-year institutional settings
Theoretical Framework
A theoretical framework is the conceptual foundation of a dissertation. It is the set of established scholarly lenses through which you examine your problem, interpret your findings, and situate your research within the broader academic conversation. Think of it as the intellectual scaffolding that holds everything together.
I am still on the earlier side of my program completing my first year in about two months and these frameworks are new to me. As I started thinking through what theoretical lenses might best support this research direction, I did some initial reading and landed on four possibilities. I expect my advisor will help me determine which of these to anchor in and which to set aside. But here is what I found and why I think each one is worth considering.
Bourdieu's Theory of Capital and Habitus feels like the most essential starting point. Bourdieu (1986) defines habitus as the durable dispositions shaped by one's class background and social position, which inform how individuals navigate social fields. First-generation, working-class students frequently enter higher education with a habitus misaligned with the cultural norms of academic institutions, producing experiences of displacement and exclusion. His concepts of social and cultural capital further illuminate the unequal distribution of resources that shape access and success in higher education. When I read about this framework, I kept thinking: this is exactly what I could not name for most of my life.
Yosso's Community Cultural Wealth (2005) offers a critical counterpoint to deficit-oriented frameworks by identifying the multiple forms of capital marginalized students bring to higher education, including navigational, resistant, and familial capital. What drew me to this framework is that it refuses to define this population by what they lack. First-generation, working-class students are asset-bearing individuals navigating inequitable systems, and for research grounded in social justice, that distinction is the whole point.
Strayhorn's Sense of Belonging (2012) situates belonging as a fundamental determinant of persistence and success for marginalized students in higher education. For first-generation, working-class students, belonging is rarely incidental. It is shaped by institutional culture, faculty attitudes, peer relationships, and the degree to which students see themselves reflected in the spaces they occupy. Given how central the experience of not belonging is to the stories I want to center, this framework seems directly relevant.
Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) offers a psychological lens for understanding the identity disruption that accompanies class mobility. When individuals occupy transitional or ambiguous social positions, as class-mobile students frequently do, the stability of their social identity is compromised. This framework may help explain the lasting psychological consequences of straddling two class worlds, consequences that institutions are largely unprepared to address.
I will work with my advisor to determine which of these frameworks best anchors the study and whether all four are necessary or if consolidation makes more sense.
I am still on the earlier side of my program completing my first year in about two months and these frameworks are new to me. As I started thinking through what theoretical lenses might best support this research direction, I did some initial reading and landed on four possibilities. I expect my advisor will help me determine which of these to anchor in and which to set aside. But here is what I found and why I think each one is worth considering.
Bourdieu's Theory of Capital and Habitus feels like the most essential starting point. Bourdieu (1986) defines habitus as the durable dispositions shaped by one's class background and social position, which inform how individuals navigate social fields. First-generation, working-class students frequently enter higher education with a habitus misaligned with the cultural norms of academic institutions, producing experiences of displacement and exclusion. His concepts of social and cultural capital further illuminate the unequal distribution of resources that shape access and success in higher education. When I read about this framework, I kept thinking: this is exactly what I could not name for most of my life.
Yosso's Community Cultural Wealth (2005) offers a critical counterpoint to deficit-oriented frameworks by identifying the multiple forms of capital marginalized students bring to higher education, including navigational, resistant, and familial capital. What drew me to this framework is that it refuses to define this population by what they lack. First-generation, working-class students are asset-bearing individuals navigating inequitable systems, and for research grounded in social justice, that distinction is the whole point.
Strayhorn's Sense of Belonging (2012) situates belonging as a fundamental determinant of persistence and success for marginalized students in higher education. For first-generation, working-class students, belonging is rarely incidental. It is shaped by institutional culture, faculty attitudes, peer relationships, and the degree to which students see themselves reflected in the spaces they occupy. Given how central the experience of not belonging is to the stories I want to center, this framework seems directly relevant.
Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) offers a psychological lens for understanding the identity disruption that accompanies class mobility. When individuals occupy transitional or ambiguous social positions, as class-mobile students frequently do, the stability of their social identity is compromised. This framework may help explain the lasting psychological consequences of straddling two class worlds, consequences that institutions are largely unprepared to address.
I will work with my advisor to determine which of these frameworks best anchors the study and whether all four are necessary or if consolidation makes more sense.