This case study of students’ experiences with retention initiatives has also revealed somewhat controversial financial challenges students can face when their lifestyles clash with pursuing success efficiently. While this section does not offer as many passages from students as the previous section, the scenarios addressed by Destiny and Kennedy speak to the unique position low-income students are placed in should they be accepted into a fall-enrolled support program like Georgia State’s Panther Excellence Program. As mentioned previously, the time constraints students face, often a result of universities valuing efficiency, can prevent students from getting certain jobs or keeping up with the ones they do have. Beyond those time-related financial risks, students may also face more explicit financial problems due the restrictions a university may place on how many courses students can take per semester, restrictions put in place, of course, to support students’ success.
Enrolling in the Panther Excellence Program, Destiny and Kennedy knew they had not earned Georgia’s Hope scholarship, the “merit-based award” given to students who graduate with a 3.0 grade point average (“Hope”). As discussed in Chapter 2, if students earn Hope, they receive tuition assistance to cover the costs of 30 credits per year along with student fees. Students must maintain a 3.0 GPA in order to continue receiving Hope every 30 credit hours until they have earned a degree (they are limited to seven years of assistance). If students do not earn Hope coming out of school, they have the chance for their GPA to be reevaluated for the scholarship once they have earned 30 credits. This is an excellent opportunity for all students, but especially low-income students.
Destiny and Kennedy were very aware of the work they needed to do in order to avoid paying out of pocket for tuition following their first year of college. What they did not know was
that they would not be given the opportunity to earn 30 credits between their spring and fall semesters. In other words, Destiny and Kennedy enrolled in their Panther Excellence Program without knowing that they would have to pay for summer school and summer housing the following year. Destiny, who entered college with one AP credit, realized after she enrolled that she would not be able to take 15 credits in the spring, and therefore, experienced a number of stresses during her school year to manage summer enrollment:
My mom has her own bills she has to pay and, you know, I don’t like asking people for stuff. I’ve always wanted to get stuff done myself, so coming into fall, I paid half of what was due myself, ‘cause I didn’t want to have to make my mom pay all of it because I didn’t, you know, get the grades I should’ve got in high school. And you know, doing step, she didn’t want me to have to have a job. She wanted me to enjoy my freshman year, but doing step and stuff and then having to take a summer class, I had to stop stepping so I could get a job. And so, I could’ve still been stepping, but I’m stressing myself over a job because I have to now pay for summer school or else I will be behind because if I don’t do summer school, I may not have the money to fully pay out the full amount for fall, and I won’t be able to stay on campus and then I’ll have to commute all the time, so it’s just like, issue on top of issue…when I could’ve just went to the
community college, so. If you don’t have the funds for PEP [Panther Excellence Program], PEP does, it creates a lot of complications.
Destiny’s elaboration on the financial struggles she faced managing the Panther Excellence Program’s requirements and earning Hope presents tension once more between a traditional college lifestyle, one where students have time to integrate into the university community both academically and socially—as evidenced by Destiny’s involvement with her school’s step
team—and the circumstances faced by low-income students. Destiny worked to experience college the way Tinto’s Integration Model suggests facilitates the most successful outcome: she attended school full time, lived on campus, and got involved in a social community at the university. However, with the limitations placed on students enrolled in Panther Excellence, limitations employed because of students’ low freshman index scores, Destiny was unable to afford the traditional lifestyle. Georgia State, in other words, accepts low-performing students into the university, many of whom are Pell-eligible, but then does not help these students pursue their 30 credits to earn Hope in a way that is financially inclusive and responsible.
It is important to note that offering lower-performing students less coursework during their first semesters in college is well-intended. As discussed earlier in this chapter, students enrolled in Georgia State’s summer bridge program benefitted greatly from the opportunity to begin school earlier without the pressures of a full course load. However, limiting students’ credit hours is also enforced with the presumption that all students can afford to attend school on the university’s preferred timeline, a presumption that once more favors the student who can afford to integrate completely into the university community, rather than those who have to balance that time with earning money or juggling other responsibilities. Therefore, for
universities to offer more inclusive pathways toward success, administrators must work to ensure students maintain some agency over how and when their money is spent. For writing programs, this finding speaks once more to the need for students’ commuter and low-income status to be considered when deciding whether certain initiatives to support students’ success should be required or optional.
In another example that highlights the complicated notion of requiring certain retention initiatives, Kennedy, who did not bring any AP credits into college, offers a perspective similar
to Destiny’s, but also gives insight as to why some students must also pay for on campus housing should they be required to attend in the summer:
Most college students take 15 credits their first year, but PEP stopped it at 13 credits, so I mean, if I had taken 15 credits that last semester and this semester, I would automatically get Hope in the fall and we wouldn’t have this problem. But, since it was 13 and 13, I have 26 and now I have to somehow go to summer school, spend more money to make money in a way. So my parents have to try to come up with $2000 for me to go to summer school and they don’t want me to stay at home since my home is in a bad condition, so they, you know, had to take out even more loans. So, my mom is trying to take out this parent plus loan to make sure I’m able to stay on campus. I mean she said if push comes to shove, then I’ll have to stay home. It’s not like that big of a deal, but I mean, you know, we don’t, I don’t want to.
Kennedy’s story is one that also includes the Student Success Center reevaluating her GPA and explaining to her at the beginning of the fall semester that she did not have to enroll in the Panther Excellence Program; however, Kennedy appreciated all of the free tutoring and support the program offered and so opted to remain in it. Her situation is unique because at the last minute she was given the choice to avoid the program’s many requirements, but at the time, Kennedy was also not aware of the program’s limitations. As she does above, Kennedy spoke of the way her and her family needed to strategize simply to raise the funds for her to attend
Georgia State. Her father borrowed money from a friend. Kennedy wrote a letter to someone she once worked for and asked for a donation. It seems especially important then, that if universities and writing programs are interested in supporting diverse student populations through various
initiatives, that they be transparent in how these initiative will specifically impact students’ paths toward their education goals.
The narratives provided by Destiny and Kennedy speak to the great attention paid by students, particularly low-income students, to how their money and their family’s money is spent. While they can respect the efforts made by their university to support them, they also do not think the university always has their best interest in mind. Kennedy further alludes to this point with regard to Georgia State’s first-year seminar course:
It was kind of like, I’m going to say BS, like a freshman orientation class. I think it’s good for some people, but I also thought like low key, you know, if I’m paying for that, that’s the kind of attitude I’ve gotten now. I’m not going to take a class that I don’t need because I am paying for it. And I think Georgia State really doesn’t, especially when you’re in a freshman learning community, they kind of don’t try to understand that. It’s just like, yeah, I know you’re talking this is good for me, but at the end of the day, we’re talking money because who is going to have 40k of debt when they come out of college? Me.
While persistence research might claim that initiatives such as a first-year seminar course and limited credit hours for low-performing students can support students’ retention, low-income students face unique challenges that can make participating in retention initiatives far more difficult. For students like Kennedy and Destiny, being able to have more control over where their money goes and when it is spent can be the difference between living in a rough situation at home that isn’t supportive of schoolwork and remaining safe on campus. It can mean the
difference between having to find a job in the middle of a school semester or continuing to benefit from the traditional college lifestyle. Understanding the low-income student’s experience
with retention initiatives compels all stakeholders in higher education to reevaluate the risks involved with removing students’ agency over how they experience college for the purposes of promoting an efficient path toward graduation. Likewise, the stories shared by Kennedy and Destiny compel writing program administrators and composition instructors to pay closer attention to the way the requirements they deem as supportive, such as non-credit bearing courses within a stretch program (Peele 2010), may impede upon students’ finances.