Rethinking First Generation Categories and Why Study Abroad Matters
For decades, colleges have relied on a simple definition to identify first-generation students: those whose parents did not earn a bachelor’s degree. The designation has become a cornerstone of equity initiatives, student support services, and funding strategies. But emerging research suggests that the binary label may mask critical differences in student experience — and obscure opportunities to improve persistence through high-impact practices such as study abroad.
A recent analysis highlighted by Inside Higher Ed, drawing on data from nearly 784,000 Common App applicants from the 2016–17 cycle, shows that six-year bachelor’s degree completion rates vary widely within the population commonly labeled “first-generation.” Students whose parents have no college experience complete college at a rate of 58 percent, while those whose parents earned associate degrees graduate at 78 percent — a gap nearly as large as the difference between many first-generation and continuing-generation students.
The variation continues among continuing-generation students. Completion rates rise from roughly 70 percent for students with one parent holding a bachelor’s degree to 92 percent for those whose parents hold graduate or professional degrees. These findings reinforce what decades of sociological research have suggested: parental education conveys not only financial advantage, but also cultural knowledge, academic expectations, and familiarity with institutional systems.
This nuance matters because participation in high-impact practices — especially study abroad — is unevenly distributed across these same parental education lines. National data consistently show that first-generation and low-income students are significantly underrepresented in study abroad, despite strong evidence that participation improves retention, time-to-degree, and graduation rates.
Research from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and related longitudinal studies indicates that students who participate in high-impact practices such as study abroad are more likely to:
• Persist to degree completion
• Maintain higher GPAs
• Graduate on time
• Report stronger academic confidence and sense of belonging
For first-generation students in particular, study abroad can function as a persistence accelerator. It provides structured access to cultural capital — confidence navigating unfamiliar systems, sustained faculty mentorship, and academic self-efficacy — that continuing-generation students often acquire informally through family networks. Yet the same students most likely to benefit are often excluded by cost, lack of targeted advising, or institutional assumptions that global learning is “extra” rather than essential.
Scholars of first-generation persistence increasingly emphasize the role of narrative identity — whether students see themselves as legitimate members of the academic community with futures that extend beyond survival toward leadership and contribution.
Study abroad plays a distinctive role in shaping this narrative. For many first-generation students, especially those from families with no prior college exposure, international experiences reframe higher education from a transactional pursuit into a transformative one. Students consistently report that study abroad:
• Strengthens sense of purpose
• Clarifies academic and career goals
• Builds confidence in professional and civic contexts
• Reinforces motivation to persist through academic or financial obstacles
Evidence suggests these effects are strongest when study abroad is intentionally structured — with pre-departure preparation, academic framing, and post-return reflection that connects global experience to degree completion and civic engagement. The emerging consensus from both completion data and global learning research is clear: one-size-fits-all definitions of first-generation status are no longer sufficient. Students whose parents have no college experience face different persistence barriers than those whose parents completed some postsecondary education — and their access to high-impact practices differs accordingly.
Institutions serious about equity should consider:
• Disaggregating first-generation status by parental education level
• Prioritizing study abroad funding for students from “striving” and “emerging” parental education groups
• Framing global learning as a retention and completion strategy, not an enrichment add-on
• Embedding study abroad within persistence narratives tied to academic identity and civic engagement
As colleges confront enrollment pressures and widening inequality, the lesson is not simply that definitions should change — but that how institutions define, support, and imagine first-generation students profoundly shapes who stays and who graduates.
