"Coming from the Place That I Do...Pushes Me Harder": How Strengths and Resilience Rooted in Social Background Inform the College Experience of Public Housing Residents

Background and Purpose: College completion is an important tool for social and economic mobility. Low-income students face multiple barriers to attending and persisting in college and are less likely to complete college compared to their higher-income peers, even though they may be highly motivated. It is important to explore cultural capital resources to help encourage college completion for youth from underrepresented backgrounds. To that end, we used a strengths-based framework to examine how background-specific strengths informed the college experience for youth from a low-income community. Specifically, we asked: (1) how does social background (including socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and first-generation status) inform youths’ motivation to attend and persist in college? and (2) how does social background inform the development of a sense of belonging in college?

Methods: We conducted focus groups and in-depth interviews with a racially diverse sample of ten current college students (n=7) and recent college graduates (n=3) who had grown up in the same large, urban public housing development. Our semi-structured protocol elicited youths’ motivations to attend and persist in college, experiences of inclusion and exclusion, and background-specific strengths developed from growing up in a public housing community. A team of researchers collaboratively coded the interview transcripts using a Reflexive Thematic Analysis approach.

Results: We found that participants capitalized on background-specific strengths to persist in college and find spaces of belonging. These strengths, which participants attributed to their experiences growing up in low-income families, included resilience, flexibility, heightened social awareness, and high levels of motivation to succeed. Almost all youth in our sample participated in formal college transition and support programs which acclimated youth to college, provided financial resources, and created community spaces. Most attended predominantly white institutions and shared a sense of exclusion in academic spaces and culture shock when interacting with students from higher-income backgrounds. Many reported financial challenges and the cascading academic, social, and emotional consequences of managing the costs of college. Participants described finding belonging in college primarily through their college transition programs and in racial-ethnic affinity spaces where youth were able to develop friendships with peers who shared similar backgrounds.

Conclusions and Implications: Youth in our sample drew on resilience, strengths, and resources developed from growing up in low-income families to persist towards college completion and find spaces of belonging in higher education settings. Our findings point to the importance of affinity spaces on college campuses and the promise of formal college transition programs in supporting youth with marginalized identities to navigate the college application process and build community beyond initial entry. These findings hold important implications for social work and public policy, suggesting the need for multi-systems approaches, engaging housing providers, schools, and students to design programs that draw on youths’ unique strengths to enhance educational attainment and the opportunities that come with it. Our findings suggest that youth growing up in public housing developments may come to college with a wealth of strengths and unique skills that can be leveraged to support college completion.