As universities around Australia work to attract a diverse mix of students from a range of backgrounds, the number who are the first in their family to study for a degree is on the rise.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
But for many of these students, who have no direct family role models to help them adjust to tertiary study, the pressure can become too much, meaning that the drop-out rate remains high.
To help combat this problem, University of Wollongong researcher Dr Sarah O'Shea - who was the first person in her immediate family to attend university - has been studying ways to relieve stress for these students and help universities better retain first-in-family students.
She has recently been awarded a prestigious National Teaching Fellowship from the federal government, which will give her $90,000 to focus on her research work for the next year.
"First-in-family students are at much higher risk of attrition than other students and they're also quite educationally disadvantaged," she said.
"They are often the pioneer in their family, which means there's an invisible pressure - not only for young people straight out of school but also for older people who might have their children looking to them - and so they have this heightened sense of pressure to do well.
"Largely ... these students don't have a 'knowledgeable other' within the family or the community, where they can get advice and normalisation ... someone to tell them, 'Yes, you'll have periods in your semester where you're really, really busy'."
Her work would be vital for Australian universities as they continued to attract students from diverse backgrounds.
"There is a massive push to get students from a diversity of backgrounds, and there's a lot of outreach focused on students from low [socio-economic status] backgrounds or students from Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander backgrounds or from rural and remote areas," she said.
"Often these students are first-in-family, and while universities are working very actively to bring these students into university, our retention rates are not good," she said.
Already through her research, Dr O'Shea has developed a website - www.firstinfamily.com.au - which draws on the experience of other students and gives ideas and strategies to those who may not be able to get advice from family members.
Dr O'Shea is now working to develop a set of national principles for teaching first-in-family students and she will continue developing her website by working with equity providers in NSW.
Her programs will let students focus on the positive achievement of being the first person in their family to attend university.
"Rather than students being defined as lacking wealth, language or ability, how much better to welcome them and their families by celebrating being the first," she said.
