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Defying the Odds, Stories of Success: A case study of Foster Care Alumni in the Community College Environment
Abstract
The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the lived experiences of foster care alumni and how these experiences influenced the individual’s decision to enroll in a community college, persist, and complete a degree. The dissertation drew from two conceptual frameworks, Bandwidth (Verschelden, 2017) and Capitals – cultural, social, and academic (Bourdieu, 1986; St. John, Hu, & Fisher, 2010). Foster care alumni were selected as the population due to their underrepresentation in college enrollment and poor completion rates. Moving beyond a deficit model that focuses on identifying obstacles, this dissertation focused on success stories of the foster care alumni in an attempt to highlight experiences that contribute to success. Each student who participated in this study is on target to complete a college degree this year. The dissertation tells the stories of six community college students using a case study methodology for data collection and analysis and narrative inquiry for data reporting. During the Fall of 2019, six students shared their stories. The stories were captured through semi-structured interviews that focused on the student’s experience in the foster care system and their entire college lifecycle (from choice to completion). The stories were analyzed, using deductive analysis, for themes related to the primary research question and sub-questions. An additional theme emerged through inductive analysis. The themes identified from the stories are Historical Hardships, Human Connections, Healthy Outlets, and Hopeful Futures. The findings highlight common themes in the student stories that point to the need for and influence of human connections, the benefit of engaging in healthy outlets, and the power of having a mindset that focuses on a hopeful future. The findings also showed, though, that despite achieving a level of success that the overwhelming majority of their foster care alumni peers do not experience, the students still struggle with historical hardships that impact their current lives. However, the students have defied the odds by persisting and moving forward to degree completion.
Subject Area
Higher education|Community college education
Recommended Citation
Philyaw, Julia M, "Defying the Odds, Stories of Success: A case study of Foster Care Alumni in the Community College Environment" (2020). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI27742715.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI27742715