First Generation Indicator

Data Guide Summary

To identify this population, University Institutional Research and Reporting (UIRR) uses the indicators available from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and the IU undergraduate admission application. The IU admission applications asks students to indicate if neither parent attended college, with the results recorded in two places in the IU Student Information System (a student group code and an application recruiting category). The FAFSA asks students to indicate the highest educational level completed by each of their parents such as “Middle school,” “High school,” “college or beyond,” or “Other/unknown.”

IR First Generation Indicator

Last Update 10/14/2020

Overview

In early June, 2007, the Indiana Commission on Higher Education (ICHE) released a report charging Indiana’s higher education community with increasing access to higher education, including for first-generation students, in order to increase the educational level and job prospects of Hoosiers.^[1] National reports suggest that students who are the first in their families to attend college tend to be more academically and financially challenged than the general freshman population, and they tend to be less likely to complete their degrees.^[2] As a result, UIRR developed a derived field in the data warehouse to identify and report on the educational attainment of first-generation students who apply to Indiana University.

Logic Behind the IR First Generation Indicator

UIRR has created a reporting flag in the IU Data Warehouse to identify first-generation students. Here are the four mutually exclusive cases where UIRR would flag students as first-generation, starting with the first scenario that is evaluated for each student:

Highest level completed by both parents per the FAFSA = “middle school” or “high school”

Or, the highest level completed by one parent per the FAFSA = middle school or high school, and there is no information on the FAFSA about the educational level of the other parent (i.e. the field is blank).

Or, no FAFSA exists for the student, and the student indicated on the Admissions application that neither parent attended college.

Or, the FAFSA has no information about both parents’ highest educational level (i.e. the field is blank), and the student indicated on the Admissions application that neither parent attended college.

Students who meet one of these tests have a positive UIRR first generation indicator (IR_FRST_GEN_IND = Y or IR_1ST_GEN_IND = Y) on a variety of tables and views, including the following:

DSS_RDS.PSE_PRSN_ST

DSS_RDS.SR_STU_TERM_GT

DSS_RDS.IR_CEN_TRM_SNPSHT_GT

DSS_RDS.IR_STU_DEGR_SNPSHT_GT

DSS_RDS.IR_ADM_SNPSHT_ST

DSS_RDS.IR_ADM_SNPSHT_PRLM_ST

DSS_RDS.IR_FA_ENRL_DEGR_AWD_SUM_GT

DSS_RDS.IR_FA_AWD_SUM_GT

DSS_RDS.IR_FA_AWD_DTL_GT

Note that students’ first generation status is updated on a nightly basis in DSS_RDS.IR_FRST_GEN_STDNTS_ST. This table includes all students who at one point met the criteria listed above for the UIRR first generation indicator. It also indicates if a student’s parents subsequently completed college based on a subsequent FAFSA record. These students remain on IR_FRST_GEN_STDNTS_ST, but they will not have a UIRR first generation indicator on the report objects listed above.

Note for technical users:

If a student was initially included on DSS_RDS.IR_FRST_GEN_STDNTS_ST, but subsequently files a FAFSA indicating that his or her parent has completed college, the row for this student in IR_FRST_GEN_STDNTS_ST is updated (IR_EXCL_PARNT_CMPLT_COLL_IND is set to Y and IR_EXCL_DT is set with the update date).

Caveats and Potential Benefits:

In many cases, students submit an electronic FAFSA and/or an electronic admissions application. In these cases, students’ answers are electronically recorded in the IU Student Information System (IU-SIS), reducing concerns about data reliability due to potential data entry errors.
Students only receive a first-generation flag if they positively indicate a parental educational level below college. As a result, students who indicate “other/unknown” on the FAFSA are not counted as first-generation, since their parents’ educational level is ambiguous.

For More Information

Contact our office using the Contact Us link on our website: https://uirr.iu.edu/contact/ .

Issues

The term “first generation” is defined differently by a number of organizations:

In various longitudinal studies, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has defined “first generation” as those whose parents did not attend college.[3] In other NCES reports, first-generation students are defined as those “whose parents have attained no more than a high school education.”[4] Although unit records from those longitudinal studies may be available for research, they could not be matched on a student-by-student basis to IU’s student population. They would also only contain a small number of IU’s student population, since they rely on samples of students selected for the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) surveys. Similar issues exist with other surveys that rely on a particular sample of students and a survey-specific questionnaire.[5]
The College Board has defined “first generation” as those whose parents did not complete a 2-year degree.[6] The College Board asks takers of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) to indicate the highest level of education completed by each parent. Students taking the SAT have the option of selecting “2-year degree” or “4-year degree.” However, the SAT data for parental educational levels are not routinely available on a unit-record basis to colleges.
The federal TRIO programs, which strive to improve retention and degree completion among underrepresented groups, define “first generation” as “an individual neither of whose natural or adoptive parents received a baccalaureate degree.”[7]

The IR approach most closely matches the federal NCES definition indicating “whose parents have attained no more than a high school education,” using data sources that are readily available at IU.

[1] Indiana Commission on Higher Education, Reaching Higher: Strategic Directions for Higher Education in Indiana, June 8, 2007, pp. 5-6, 17 (http://www.che.state.in.us/PDF%20Files/Strategic%20Directions%20final%2006-08-2007.pdf).

[2] See for example page iv of Office of Educational Research and Improvement. 1998. First-generation students: undergraduates whose parents never enrolled in postsecondary education. Statistical Analysis Report, U.S. Department of Education, NCES 98-082. For a more recent report, see Saenz, Victor, et. al. 2007. First in My Family: A Profile of First-Generation College Students at Four-Year Institutions Since 1971. Higher Education Research Institute (UCLA).

[3] Office of Educational Research and Improvement. 1998. First-generation students: undergraduates whose parents never enrolled in postsecondary education. Statistical Analysis Report, U.S. Department of Education, NCES 98-082.

[4] U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. 2000. Mapping the Road to College: First-Generation Students’ Math Track, Planning Strategies, and Context of Support, NCES 2000–153, by Laura Horn and Anne-Marie Nuñez. Project Officer: Larry Bobbitt. Washington D.C.

[5] Engle, Jennifer, Adolfo Bermeo, Colleen O’Brien. 2006. Straight From the Source: What Works for First-Generation College Students. The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, Washington, D.C.

[6] Dougherty, Pam, Renee Gernand, Christen Pollock, and Andrew Wiley for the College Board. First Generation Students in the 2006 SAT Cohort. Paper presented at the Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Kansas City, 2007.

[7] See for example the definition of “first generation college student” in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) for the Upward Bound Program, Title 34, Volume 3, Part 645, Section 6: 34CFR645.6. http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cfr/retrieve.html