First generation college students at The University of Alabama may not know it, but they have friends in high places. All the way at the top, in fact.
University President Guy Bailey, who completed his undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University between 1968 and 1974, was also a first generation college student.
The Alabama First Student Organization said nearly 20 percent of the University’s undergraduate population comes from a household in which neither of the student’s parents or guardians have earned a four-year undergraduate degree. This is a demographic to which Bailey said he feels a special connection.
“I feel a lot of kinship with those kids because they remind me a lot of myself when I started school here,” Bailey said in an Oct. 12 interview with The Crimson White. “Paying for college when I went was still very difficult, although it was not nearly as expensive.”
Bailey said recipients of need-based scholarships and loans, like the Coca-Cola First Generation Scholarship Program and Pell Grants, are no less deserving of financial assistance than pupils who receive aid predicated on academic merit.
“Those kids have significant merit too. Most of those kids qualify for merit-based aid,” he said. “The fact that you have need doesn’t mean that you don’t have merit.”
Hannah Copeland, a sophomore majoring in computer science engineering and a first generation college student, can attest to Bailey’s assertion. She said the funds she receives annually from Coca-Cola are a crucial addition to her institutional academic scholarship, which was awarded based on her ACT score and high school grade point average.
“My academic scholarship isn’t enough by itself to allow me to come here. I would definitely not be able to pay for school without [the Coca-Cola scholarship],” she said. “I would probably only be able to afford to attend a community college right now otherwise.”
Bailey said he hopes the University will be able to increase its efforts to aid students who demonstrate academic prowess and monetary necessity moving forward.
“We’re anxious to expand the resources for kids who have financial need. We’d like to meet that need as much as we can without their having to borrow,” he said. “I probably worry as much as you do and maybe more about the level of student debt. That’s a significant issue for all of us.”
Copeland said first generation students often have needs beyond the financial and said the University’s and Coke’s efforts through regular guidance meetings and an intra-scholarship program have proven to be instrumental aspects of her successful transition to college life.
“Neither one of my birth parents nor my adopted parents went to college. But for some reason, I always knew that I would come to school,” Copeland said. “I definitely feel a real pressure to succeed, but it’s not something where I’m succeeding to prove anybody wrong or something like that. I’ve always been hard on myself anyway. But I look at my parents and see how much they have struggled, and that makes me want to work hard and do well.”
Cortez Burney, a sophomore majoring in marketing and a Coca-Cola scholar as well, said a first generation student’s transition to college is unique in its pioneering nature.
“I feel like the level of responsibility put on us is higher just because we have far less information from home about the things that we can expect,” he said in an emailed statement. “I can’t go home and ask my mom how she managed to study for finals, work and still find time to sleep because she never had to do it.”
Burney said he feels out of place within the typical stereotype of a first generation college student striving to overcome a disadvantaged or underprivileged background, as his parents have been successful despite not earning a degree.
“I was the product of an average middle class American family, and I have never really felt held back because of my parents/guardians’ lack of degrees,” he said. “I’ve seen all of my life what hard work and no education can produce, so I feel like I have been given a headstart, almost. If my parents could do a somewhat decent job for themselves with a high school diploma and hard work, what am I capable of?”
Copeland has a few ideas.
“It’s really inspiring and comforting to know that someone who was in my shoes is president of the University. He started out like me, and now he’s got all this under his belt,” she said. “It’s cool to think that there’s really nothing to stop me from reaching the same level of success.”
