Celebration of first-generation students acknowledges over 30% of student body
Today, more first-generation students attend Wabash than ever before. To honor the National Week of Celebration of First-Generation College Students, Wabash passed out “1st Generation Proud” t-shirts to anyone at the College – not just students – who are first-generation to properly celebrate the week and the first-generation students who have made great contributions to Wabash.
“Approximately 270 of our current students are first generation,” said Professor of Psychology and Klingaman Chair for the First Year Experience Robert Horton. “Nearly 20% of our faculty and staff and more than half of our senior administration is also first-generation.”
Nationally, the rate of first-generation students has been increasing. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 38% of undergraduate college students were first-generation in 2020. This presence has grown from only 18% of students being first-generation in 2011.
“At Wabash, our numbers have stayed pretty much steady,” said Horton. “We’ve had around 30% of the student body being first-generation college students.”
With so many first-generation students, however, it is imperative that the College acknowledges the trends behind students who are the first in their family to forge a path to an undergraduate education.
Two main concerns stick out to those most familiar with the situation: According to BestColleges, first-generation students often come from lower-income families and incur more student loan debt. First-generation students are also much less likely to finish their degree.
“The national trend is for first-generation students to graduate at a far lower rate than their continuing generation peers, with a gap in four–year graduation rates being in the neighborhood of 20–25 percentage points,” said Horton. “At Wabash, it remains true that our first-generation students, on average, graduate at a lower rate than their continuing generation peers. But the gap [at Wabash] is much smaller, closer to six or seven percentage points in a given year.”
But first-generation students at Wabash won’t let these statistics define them, instead choosing to take their own path during and after Wabash.
“As a first-generation college student, I’m constantly reminded of the statistics that say that I’m less likely to complete my degree,” said Eric Copeland ’26. “But instead of feeling down and discouraged about those numbers, I see them as motivation. They represent the challenges that can be overcome, rather than limits that define us.”
As trends continue to look up for first-generation students, they play an important role in higher education. Current undergraduate trends indicate a decline in attendance to universities and colleges, so continuing to recruit first-generation students will be an important piece of higher education surviving the declines in attendance.
“I believe that first-generation students are the future of college education,” said Copeland. “We bring an immense amount of resilience, determination and perspectives to campuses all across the nation. These qualities embody what higher education should stand for – we are not just attending college, we are redefining what success in higher education looks like.”