Hustling and Keeping It Real: A Theoretical Approach to Dealing with the Costs and Inequalities of Pursuing a Higher Education As a First Generation College Student

In the Winter of 2018, the University of Michigan’s Central Student Government released the Campus Affordability Guide, a document aimed at “cost-effective living at the University” for undergraduates. It was received with backlash from students, some of which responded by putting together a guide of their own titled, “Being Not-Rich at UM,” and subsequently establishing the Michigan Affordability and Action Coalition, a student based organization “devoted to bettering the quality of life for lower-income students on campus.” This event was preceded by the Graduate Employee Organization’s (GEO) student union contract negotiations the year before, and by the Lecturer Employee Organization’s (LEO) union contract negotiations during the same Winter semester as the guide’s publication. At the crux of each of these events is the reality behind what living in the “most educated city in America” means for the hundreds of students (both graduate and undergraduate), and many of the part-time educators who attend and teach at the UofM— as costs of living are getting higher, attaining a livable wage or stipend is getting harder. What are the costs—social, economic, cultural, and health— of attaining a higher education across the United States? How does the University of Michigan serve as a case study for understanding these costs? How do these costs disproportionately affect first generation, or non traditional, graduate students of color?

I draw on autoethnographic methodologies, qualitative data from the UofM’s School of Social Work Critical Intersectionality Project, a review of the literature on education, criminology, and wealth/economic disparities, and statistical data in conceptualizing new theoretical approaches within social work practice to dealing with the intersectional costs and inequalities of [higher] education, as “the great equalizer.” I term these theoretical approaches as “hustling” and “keeping it real,”  as a first generation college graduate student.