TITLE Predicting Student Success: The Relative Impact of Ethnicity, Income, and Parental Education. AIR 1999 Annual Forum Paper.

This study examined whether first-generation community college students (those whose parents did not attend college) differed from others on background, enrollment, and outcome variables and whether first-generation status alone added a unique contribution to predicting academic success. Subjects were 653 first-year students at a large, urban two-year California college, 44 percent of whom were identified as first-generation. Data came from two sources: the annual student survey and the student records database. As expected, first-generation students were more likely to be older and Hispanic, and to report both lower incomes and lower high school grade point averages (GPA) than other students. Contrary to past research, this study found no significant differences in gender, hours of employment, enrollment status (full- or part-time), withdrawal from all classes, first-term GPA, or persistence between first-generation and other students. Although first-generation students were more likely to enroll i