10

A Guiding Hand

Advising That Connects with Students’ Culturally Situated Motivational Orientations toward College

With Tasneem Mandviwala

While White young adults are significantly more likely to graduate from college than Black and Latinx young adults, within these two minority populations there is a further disparity: women are significantly more likely to graduate than men.¹ Both Black and Latinx women academically outperform their male counterparts even when socioeconomic and other factors are taken into account. Although research and the media have paid significant attention to the “endangered Black male college student,” less attention has been paid to the Latinx male student.² Notably, there are numerous universities with programs called either the “Black Male Initiative” or the “African American Male Initiative” that are focused on increasing the numbers and success of Black college men.³ Few such programs exist for Latinx men.

Only recently have we begun to hear of the “vanishing” presence of Latinx men in college—“vanishing” because of their erasure from college campuses.⁴ In 2015, 43 percent of all Latinx college students were men, compared to 54 percent in 1976.⁵ The attention and programming directed to Black men is warranted; Black men make up only 5 percent of undergraduates at degree-granting colleges.⁶ However, Latinx men are not doing any better. They currently make up less than 8 percent of undergraduates at degree-granting colleges. As Victor Sáenz and Luis Ponjuan note, “despite these trends, research attention to [Latinx men] has been minimal, and public outcry has been almost nonexistent.”⁷

Given the previous chapter, a puzzle presents itself: Why is it that Latinx women, despite facing more cultural challenges to college, surpass Latinx men in attaining higher education? Unless we believe that there are gendered cognitive differences among Latinx youth, we must turn to sociocultural factors to help elucidate the disparity between men and women’s persistence rates. Julio Cammarota suggests that though marianismo—prioritizing caring for others and attending to responsibilities inside the home—presents challenges for women’s college success, it is also a motivator, because obtaining a degree is a meaningful route through which Latinx women can gain greater autonomy.⁸

As in the previous chapter, we again take a racially gendered approach to understanding students’ experiences. A simplistic application of what has been learned from research on Latinx women because of shared Latinx heritage, or learned from Black men because of shared maleness, would fall short and ignore the complexity and nuances of the Latinx male experience.⁹ Although there are many similarities, our interviews revealed that Latinx men differ from Black men and from Latinx women in critical ways. We found that compared to Latinx women, Latinx men were less likely to incorporate a love of schooling in their academic identities and also less likely to state that they were going to college for self-development. These factors may place many Latinx men at odds with their institutions’ cultural orientations and at risk for early departure.¹⁰

In comparison to Black men, Latinx men were more likely to come from very low-educated and immigrant families. This means that their home life did not include access to a knowledgeable adult who could guide them through the college process, from its very beginning in dealing with applications, school choice, and financial aid, to advice for managing the stress of finals week or support in persistence decisions. We found that Latinx men were woefully reliant on institutional guidance for a successful college experience; 37 percent had parents with no education beyond high school (17 percent had parents who did not complete high school), compared to 20 percent of the Black men whose parents had no education beyond high school (only 4 percent did not complete high school).

As with Latinx women, it is necessary to consider the combined effects of sociocultural factors such as first-generation student status in conjunction with cultural factors such as definitions of masculinity and success. Accordingly, with a focus on college persistence, the current chapter details the various sociocultural factors Latinx male students face. Many administrators at historically White colleges and universities are not only unfamiliar with these factors but are often entirely ignorant of them.

To avoid the trap of invoking surface-level social and cultural stereotypes for the observed outcomes of racial-ethnic minority groups, we examine how attending to students’ social and cultural norms and needs adds nuance to traditional theories of college persistence. Traditional theories of persistence state that in addition to academic challenges, many students leave college because of their inability to adjust to the college context.¹¹ Students who do not succeed are believed to have difficulty managing their emotions about being away from home, do not find belonging on campus, and struggle with their new autonomy.

The commonly accepted solution to these challenges is greater campus engagement.¹² The belief is that by separating their sense of self from family and precollege friends and immersing themselves in their academic identity and campus activities—essentially making campus their new home—students will see themselves as integrated into the institution and as valued members of it. However, as noted throughout this book, many have criticized these traditional theories for not fully considering how this model of persistence ignores the lack of belonging and cultural exclusion that many racial-ethnic minority students experience.¹³ White students, higher-income students, and students with college-educated parents may be able to transfer their sense of home to campus by immersing themselves in campus activities, but historically marginalized students may not find that sense of home on campus, argue David Pérez and Victor Sáenz, regardless of how much they “abandon family traditions, customs, and values to gain membership in predominantly White institutions.” Instead, the authors continue, abandoning one’s culture for the sake of campus belonging “can have a detrimental effect on the psychological well-being of Latino male undergraduates.”¹⁴

By comparing and contrasting Latinx men who had difficult transitions with those who had successful transitions into college, we are able to identify culturally situated insights that may help such students gain solid footing in educational settings, and what educational institutions can do to provide effective supports.¹⁵ This search for variation within is, as higher education scholar Terrell Strayhorn argues, in direct contrast to much of the existing research on social and cultural capital, which “treats minority students as a homogenous group whose experiences and capital reservoirs are uniformly deficient and decidedly different from that of majority students.”¹⁶

Even though we begin at entry into college, the full story begins with these students’ K–12 educational experiences. As with all other American youth, minority boys receive the message that “college is not only an expected part of the life plan, it is the ultimate symbol of independence.”¹⁷ However, these youths receive the fewest K–12 educational supports that would enable them to prepare for college. They also must contend with negative educational stereotypes. Black and Latinx boys have the highest rates of suspensions, expulsions, and special education assignment, and the lowest rates of placement in advanced courses and gifted programs.¹⁸

The Latinx men in our study gave four general reasons—“motivational orientations”—for why they enrolled in college. These motivational orientations include, from most to least frequently cited, (1) future financial stability, (2) receptivity to school-based mentorship, (3) earning family pride and honor within the community, and (4) joy of learning and self-development. Although we differentiate between these motivational orientations, they were not exclusive, and students often offered multiple motivational orientations. That said, one particular orientation tended to dominate and frame the thoughts of the men in our study.

The three students we detail in this chapter—Marco, José, and Lucas—were all first-generation Latinx students who combined financial aid with work to pay for school. However, they varied in their access to mentors who could guide them through the college process.

Marco attended Urban StateU, a decision he made on his own because he felt that particular school was the best balance between his interests, financial resources, and family obligations. His dominant motivational orientation toward college was joy and interest in academic learning. This was, out of necessity, a self-motivated goal, as Marco had received minimal support with the college process. For him, the aimlessness of some of his peers was the spur to focus on education as an avenue to a successful and fulfilling life. His four sisters were significantly older than he was, and the only one of them who had attended university had left home years ago, so he had little mentorship in the application process. Marco commuted to campus, and during his waking hours when he was not in class he was either doing homework or working to cover his own financial needs and contribute to the family’s finances. Despite his high level of self-discipline and self-reliance—or perhaps because of it—his transition into college became increasingly difficult. He entered his sophomore year feeling exhausted and on the verge of burnout.

Like Marco, José commuted to college during his first year at Suburban StateU and worked full-time. José’s high school had a high dropout rate, and he was not sure he would attend college until the final months of his senior year. It was then that the direct encouragement and guidance of his counselor and teachers helped him decide, and his motivational orientation for attending college solidified. He wanted to earn pride and dignity for himself and his family in the community. With no sibling or parental support, José quickly learned that turning to the right school-based mentors was the difference between failure and success. This receptivity toward school-based mentorship would help him later. As he made his way through sophomore year at college, it was clear that his success was the result of not being afraid to ask for institutional help as he pursued his goals.

Lucas—who was chronicled in chapter 7 as well—was also enrolled at Suburban StateU. Sharing many of the same background characteristics with Marco and José, Lucas grew up in an immigrant family with parents with no schooling beyond high school. However, by getting him into private Catholic schools, his parents were able to give him access to a college preparatory curriculum. His two older brothers had graduated from college when Lucas was a high school senior, and they reinforced the expectation that he would get a college degree. They were also able to help him through the college application, enrollment, and transition process. Lucas had high aspirations for college and was motivated by future financial stability. He combined this motivational orientation with support from home and receptivity to school-based mentorship.

The Role of the Self

Traditional college culture encourages—actually expects—students to attend college for the sheer love of learning, intellectual exploration, and overall self-enhancement.¹⁹ Although Latinx women were much more likely to cite these reasons as motivations for attending college, Latinx men like Marco were also motivated by this aim.

Marco was majoring in biology with his eye on neuroscience. “For a long time, I’ve been telling myself I’m gonna do medicine, but like I said, the science, there’s so much you can do in that field. I wouldn’t even know; sometimes it’s like, just the idea of being a scientist is enough.”

It was clear later in the conversation that Marco had a hard time justifying his love of learning as the main reason for attending college. His hesitancy stems from the distance that claim interjects between him and his community. As Richard Rodriguez wrote in his autobiographical essay, “as [my parents] watched me advance through my education … they seemed to know that my education was separating us from one another, making it difficult for us to resume familiar intimacies.”²⁰

As a first-generation student in an immigrant family, Marco found himself in a complex liminal cultural space. Without navigational resources, including the right sociocultural language to speak openly and comfortably about their experiences, students like Marco struggle to make it through to the other side. Performed masculinities and cultural scripts for manhood shape men’s perceptions of themselves and their life trajectories. These factors are critical to understanding the minority male view of college.²¹ Latinx men add another important orientation: going to college for respectability, machismo, caballerismo, and dignidad. These are important gendered cultural values that emphasize men’s roles in providing for their family, be it materially by providing financial support or more abstractly by increasing the clout and social standing of the family within the community.

The term caballerismo was developed in large part in response to the negative deficit approach of the dialogue around machismo. However, instead of focusing on the destructive aspects of masculine control, caballerismo focuses on “chivalrousness, family centeredness, nurturing stances, and approaching of problems from a more emotionally connected perspective,” according to critical higher education scholars Victor Sáenz and Beth Bukoski.²² Interwoven into both machismo and caballerismo is the idea that men must value and prioritize their families; to not do so would be considered unmanly or weak. Having a successfully masculine reputation would include maintaining dignity, or dignidad, for one’s self by maintaining it for one’s family by graduating from college.²³

Machismo and caballerismo are reflected in Latinx men’s focus on going to college to “give back” to their families and communities. These values, though, are misaligned with the traditional expectation that students should go to college to learn, explore, and improve themselves. This may account for Marco’s feelings of “weirdness” surrounding his desire to go to college primarily to learn rather than to contribute to the social and financial capital of his family and community. “It’s just that I feel people think it’s weird,” he said, “when you say this. Like, ‘Why do you wanna go to college?’ ‘I wanna go to college to learn.’ ”

These Latinx cultural scripts of masculinity are often listed as obstacles when they are forced into an uncritical comparison with traditional college norms. However, they can be transformed into assets if students and universities recognize and engage them, as they did with José.²⁴

José describes himself as “a typical Mexican” and is well aware of the underlying structural and sociocultural factors that Latinx men grapple with. “My parents didn’t finish high school. I’m the first one to finish high school and enroll to a four-year institution. My [first-year] college experience wasn’t the best, ’cause I was commuting. I had to come back to work because I had expenses I had to pay, as well as help my family out. So college the first year wasn’t the best, but I really enjoyed it, even though I didn’t do as many activities as I wished to.”

He has the prototypical interdependent, community-oriented understanding of why he is going to college.

His parents were surprised at his decision to go to college and told him they had no money for it. He reassured them of scholarships and financial aid options. He also knew he would be commuting, which “will help me by saving thousands of dollars,” as well as working. But still his parents “weren’t 100 percent. So I finished my first semester. It was a tough semester, since I didn’t have that much encouragement from my family. But afterwards they found out I was doing better. And they were encouraging me even more to further my education, to finish up in four years.”

In sharp contrast to the experiences of the Latinx women discussed in the previous chapter, José was able to quickly overcome his parents’ doubts; and his gender—an integral aspect of who he is—was never implicated in their reservations about his college aspirations. Although these Latinx men also commuted to campus and had to manage the bulk of their college expenses, their parents made space for them to focus on school without the added burden of family caretaking obligations.²⁵

The Many Roles for Others

Most of the research on family support for college focuses on parents, but we found that having a college-going or college-educated older sibling substantially improved the outcomes of younger siblings in first-generation families. That was certainly the case for Lucas.

Later in the interview, Lucas clarified that it was his parents who created the expectation that college was something he “had” to do, but it was his brothers, along with teachers and a guidance counselor, who were “constantly pushing it,” who helped him realize his goal. His guidance counselor’s push, in fact, was what “got me to where I am today.”

In essence, Lucas’s parents, his brothers, and his school mentors—each offering contributions from their different funds of knowledge—worked together with him to ensure a successful transition into college.²⁶

In our interviews, José touched on all four motivational orientation patterns: desire to contribute to his family, future financial stability, influence of a school-based mentor, and the desire to improve one’s self and expand one’s sphere of being. Without mentors within the educational system, he would have struggled to translate his motivations into the language that resonates with college administrators.

José’s experiences with school-based mentors in high school and then in college led to his awareness that asking for help has been one of the most effective approaches to his college success, and is the primary advice he would give to others.

First-generation students need many sources of support to lower the barriers created by their lack of insider knowledge.

However, even when first-generation students like José recognize the need for and benefits of asking for help, their outside responsibilities, like commuting or working, may pose barriers to receiving help. José would do his homework after work, at night, when his professors were unavailable to help with questions. His schedule never aligned with their office hours, which was frustrating for him. “And that’s why my grades were lower,” he said. “So my job was bringing me down ’cause it was full-time.” As will be seen, a set of informal networks would later help him manage his work-school conflicts.

By his sophomore year, José had stopped commuting and became more involved in campus activities, like joining a fraternity and other extracurriculars. It was in his second year that he also recognized the need for another type of support: emotional. This is significant in two ways. First, asking for or accepting emotional help would seem counter to stereotypical masculine norms of Latinx culture, as well as American culture.²⁷ Second, belonging and emotional well-being are central aspects of theories of college persistence.²⁸

In contrast to José’s path, Marco’s college transition was arguably less successful. Of course, such a comparison requires the disclaimer of differences in individual histories, personalities, and talents. As evident earlier, Marco’s dominant motivation to attend college was a desire to learn and develop himself. It is interesting then that Marco would struggle more in college than José, whose primary motivational orientation—to support his parents and future family—would be considered less than ideal.

One substantial difference between José’s and Marco’s approaches to college was their emphasis on the self. Marco wanted to go to college “to learn,” but he also wanted to “teach myself,” and “always told myself I was gonna go to college.” Whereas dominant American norms laud individualism and a focus on the self, Latinx norms tend to prioritize communal actions and goals. This is a potential disconnect for Latinx students, particularly those whose families recently immigrated. Because of these students’ need to lean on others to fill their knowledge gaps, an interdependent approach to college may lead to greater success.²⁹

The challenges associated with Marco’s independent mind-set can be seen in how he approached the college application process, ultimately leading to a less successful outcome than José’s. Despite his statements describing the many ways that his high school helped, Marco believes that he got into college with little help from anyone.

When asked who helped him from his high school, he said teachers inspired him to push harder, but no one “helped me too much with my applications.” Instead, he said, “a few teachers pushed us to meet those deadlines. They got on our backs.” His homeroom teacher “was doing that to everyone,” he said. His science teacher was also willing to write recommendations, though she told students to write the letter and she would sign off, “so you could express what you wanted it to express. So, yeah, it wasn’t all me.”

Marco’s experience reveals subtle but important differences from José’s. Like José, Marco describes his high school teachers as helping and pushing him along, but unlike José, he did not personalize their support; it was simply something they did for everyone. Research shows that personalized support from faculty and academic advisers is pivotal for first-generation students’ success in college.³⁰ Because Marco never personalized his high school support, he had limited skills for how to obtain it in the future, making his first-year transition harder than necessary.

Marco focused on accessing formal supports, but his commute and full-time work schedule were barriers. His interactions with professors, he said, were “too few,” especially in large classes. “You know, they have a line of students going up to meet them at the end of every class. It’s discouraging, because three hundred people aren’t gonna ask questions at the end of class.” Office hours did not align with his work schedules. He did, however, take advantage of tutoring sessions before tests. Though there, too, he sometimes struggled to find a good fit. “It’s kinda hard when you don’t know who’s a good tutor, though, when you’re new. Man, I just asked a girl a question, and she’s like, ‘I don’t know. Hold on, let me Google it.’ And I was like, what’re you gonna do for me?! I can Google it.”

While the tutoring services he mentioned helped, they certainly were not as helpful as the professor would have been. Seeking academic help and being given a peer tutor who “can Google it” would be understandably disheartening to a student who must be maximally productive to balance competing responsibilities.

The Latinx men in our study often already had vague guidance from their parents. What they need from advisers was clarity and direction from someone who had traveled the road before, someone who could help them ask and answer questions they did not know to ask. We found that this kind of support occurred when students and their advisers were able to build a rapport that allowed them to talk about more than just school. Marco believed he did not need that kind of personal interaction. José, on the other hand, saw his advising relationship as a friendship. José viewed all the relationships he made with advisers and peers as a potential source of help. “I made friends with my counselor, and she helped me, offering me like math tutoring. She introduced me to this guy named Roger [a junior], and he’s been my mentor, tutoring me and mentoring me at the same time. Helping me, so it became easier.” In fact, most of the friends José has made on campus are, he believes, for tutoring and asking advice.

Marco, in contrast, assigned his college advisers and friends a much more circumscribed role in his life—more as “a backdrop like, oh, I need to wind down, rather than, oh, I’m gonna seek out help. But I did have the friends who I studied with. That’s definitely necessary. You gotta have study groups.”

Succeeding in college is about much more than academics, and Marco was left to navigate all these other aspects of college based on what he could figure out for himself.

This independent approach would become more of a hindrance than an asset, which was evident in his sentiment that things got progressively harder from the first to the second semester of his first year. In contrast, for José and many other Latinx men we spoke with, the college experience was something they settled into, something that felt much more comfortable after the initial adjustment challenges. However, for Marco, despite becoming more accustomed to the campus and general expectations of college, he seems to have found the challenges growing as time wore on. By the spring of his first year, he was still burned out from the first semester, he said.

In the end, seeking help seemed to make the difference between success and burnout. Neither Marco nor José lived on campus for the first year. Both faced immense financial challenges and work responsibilities. Both have immigrant parents who are not college educated. Marco has a college-educated older sibling. So why, then, is José’s experience noticeably more successful, with less burnout—a transition that will potentially encourage him to persevere and complete his degree? The answer may be because while Marco shied away from having more than formal and academic discussions with institutional agents and college peers, José’s “talk to everybody” approach maximized potential avenues of support and guidance. It appears that through engaged help-seeking—hearing more advice, sharing more emotions, and consciously pursuing help—José gained the edge needed to help overcome his knowledge gaps about how to navigate college and prevent burnout.

Help for students should not be one-directional, only sought but not offered. Academic advisers and faculty should be actively offering help. If engaged help-seeking is taking advantage of potential resources by “talking to everybody,” engaged help-providing is first listening to understand “where students are coming from” and then offering advice that fills the gaps. Marco himself says that it is this lack of engaged help that is missing from the institutional side of the interaction.

The experiences of the Latinx men detailed in this chapter confirm the critical role of social support in college success. Social support can be instrumental assistance, such as study partners, class notes, homework assistance, or it can be informational assistance, such as advice on norms and expectations. It can also be cultural advice about formal and informal resources and opportunities.³¹ Social support also has academic benefits by helping to improve emotional well-being, such as reduction of depression and anxiety that can impair cognitive functioning and attention. All the preceding chapters also illustrate the pivotal role of social support in the development and maintenance of academic motivation and the likelihood of responding to stressors with active problem solving versus withdrawal and disengagement.³²

Not all students are aware of their need for a strong campus-based social support network, and not all students have the social skills to make friends with their academic adviser. Therefore, administrators and faculty should be more proactive in building friendships with students and practicing a more engaged and socioculturally sensitive understanding of historically marginalized students. This latter component is perhaps the most challenging, because of the demands for change it makes. Because of that, it is also potentially the most beneficial.³³ A socioculturally engaged institution would become proactively aware of and responsive to variations in the challenges, strengths, and opportunities within subgroups of the student body. This requires understanding not only the obvious socioeconomic stressors that subgroups of historically marginalized students face—such as working full-time and commuting to campus—but also the more intangible cultural stressors, such as the difficulty conceptualizing college as being about self-development versus preserving the honor and dignity of one’s family. Actively recognizing a broader range of culturally situated motivational orientations toward college would enrich the broader campus culture by better incorporating historically marginalized students.