Where My Dissertation Is Headed: Low-Income, First-Generation Graduates

A few weeks ago I wrote about the moment my dissertation direction shifted, away from introversion bias in online learning and toward something more fundamental: what it actually costs a person to cross class lines through higher education. If you read that post, you know how personal the stakes are for me since I am this exact demographic. This post is the follow-up. The focus has continued to evolve, and I want to document where it stands now. To build something more coherent and focused, I felt it was necessary to revisit and revise my title, problem statement, purpose statement, and research questions so they could more meaningfully inform the literature review structure I am developing. 

I made two key decisions in this process

Firstly, I decided to focus exclusively on graduates, from any degree level, associates through doctorate, rather than current students. It became clear to me that the experience of someone still navigating this system looks fundamentally different from someone who has already traversed it and can reflect on it with distance.

Next, I decided to tighten the population further to focus specifically on low-income, first-generation graduates rather than first-generation students broadly. I feel strongly that income is central to what it means to be working class in the context I am researching. A first-generation student from a higher income household has a meaningfully different experience of social class mobility than one who grew up in poverty or near poverty. Keeping income as a defining characteristic of the population will directly inform one of my literature review buckets, specifically the formative context and family dynamics of low-income households and how those shape identity before students ever set foot on a campus.

I know there are additional details that need to be worked out, such as whether to require participants be a minimum number of years removed from graduation, and how to define low-income for participant selection purposes. My instinct is that those are methodology questions and do not need to be resolved before the literature review and that the framing I have now is defined enough to build on.

Here is where everything currently stands

Working Title: Navigating Social Class Mobility in Higher Education: A Qualitative Study of Identity Development Among Low-Income, First-Generation College Graduates

Problem Statement: Low-income, first-generation college graduates face persistent and underexplored psychosocial consequences of crossing class lines through higher education. While existing research has focused primarily on persistence, retention, and degree completion, the lived experience of social class mobility does not end at graduation. Students navigating class mobility through higher education frequently experience disruptions to identity, social capital deficits, cultural displacement, and internalized insecurities that extend well beyond the college years. Institutional support systems have been designed primarily around academic and financial needs, with limited attention to the identity-level experience of this population or the long-term consequences of straddling two class worlds. This gap 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 low-income, first-generation college graduates as they reflect on navigating social class mobility through higher education. Grounded in a constructivist framework, this study centers participant voices across associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degree levels to develop a deeper understanding of the identity, psychosocial, and systemic dimensions of the class mobility experience, including its trajectory beyond graduation. Findings will inform institutional systems, policies, and leadership practices that more equitably support this population.

Research Questions:
Central Question: How do low-income, first-generation college graduates describe their experience of navigating social class mobility through higher education and beyond?

Sub-questions:

1. How do participants describe the influence of their formative background, including family dynamics, socioeconomic context, and cultural values, on their identity entering higher education?
2. How do participants describe the impact of the higher education experience on their identity and sense of belonging?
3. What institutional structures, relationships, or practices do participants identify as supportive or harmful to their development?
4. How do participants describe their identity and sense of self in the years following graduation?

Literature Review Structure

My literature review is taking shape around three buckets.

Bucket 1: Formative Context and Identity Origins
This bucket covers socioeconomic background and formative context, family dynamics and first-generation identity, working-class cultural attitudes toward education and white-collar work, and the cultural values and community capital that students carry into higher education.

Bucket 2: Identity and Belonging in Higher Education
This bucket covers belonging and identity disruption during the higher education experience, institutional barriers and how students navigate them, and the role of institutional structures and policy.

Bucket 3: Post-Graduation Identity and Long-Term Development
This bucket covers post-graduation straddling and long-term identity development. This is the most underexplored area in the existing literature and the part I am most focused on.

More to come as the literature review takes shape...