Researchers have demonstrated that personal financial disadvantage and economic stress impede the academic attainment of students in higher education (Walpole, 2007). Specifically, financial hardships such as low family income, material deprivation, or serious debt may hinder persistence to degree attainment. While scholars have demonstrated that economically disadvantaged (ED) students struggle more than their peers in persisting to a degree, they have not determined the nature of this socio-economic condition and the ways in which this condition may affect persistence and students’ collegiate experiences.

This qualitative investigation employs an uncommon approach in explaining a frequently researched topic. It relies on a narrative structure that examines, phenomenologically, how the financial stories of students in higher education interact with their stories of collegiate persistence and experiences at a regional comprehensive university and community college in southern California. Data in this investigation comprise multiple semistructured and email interviews of 18 degree-seeking undergraduate students. Creation of three composite narratives serve as the primary analysis, with additional analysis including coding and categorization guided by capabilities and stress theories.

ED students experience personal and family financial struggle before and during college. These students are challenged with both broad and specific affordability issues in a negative environment involving unexpected financial burdens and structural impediments. ED students value the financial security of higher education and are motivated by both struggles and successes. The students demonstrate the capabilities to meet financial needs and believe in individual ability as the determinant to persistence in college yet describe how external factors such as financial aid and employment create barriers to college completion and experiences. ED student financial situations also create stress which affects student experience. Implications for scholars, policy makers, and practitioners are discussed.

Much of the scholarly literature understands international student educational experiences largely as a process of adjustment to host country norms and institutions and portrays international students as deficit in relations to these norms. In contrast, international students live reflexively, shape their own identities, and are successful academically. International students are self-formed, and international students’ education is a process of self-formation in which students manage their lives reflexively, shaping their own identities (Marginson, 2014).

The purpose of this investigation was to capture the social and academic experiences of undergraduate international students enrolled in a state comprehensive university (SCU). Guided by P-E fit theory (Dawis & Lofquist, 1984; Edwards, Caplan, & Van Harrison, 1998; Edwards & Rothbard, 1999) and the concept of self-formation (Marginson, 2014), this investigation explored the experiences of thirteen undergraduate students from five different countries matriculated at an SCU in Southern California.

Findings suggest that SCU provided an academic environment that was positive, welcoming, and inclusive. Although the literature signals a potential incompatibility between international students and their host institutions, the narratives compiled in this investigation depict undergraduate international students as compatible with SCU and satisfied with their experiences, albeit with different levels of engagement and of interest in interaction with faculty and with their domestic counter peers. The findings were separated into sections that include groups of students who share similar experiences at this SCU: The Transformed and Engaged Student Group, the Utilitarian Student Group, and the Disengaged Student Group. To some extent then there was both PE-fit and PE- misfit. Fit because the SCU environment facilitated student satisfaction; misfit because some students (i.e., Utilitarian students, and Disengaged Students) did not integrate in all ways with the campus. All students preserved their cultural identity during their studies at SCU.

The social and academic experiences articulated by international undergraduate students can help practitioners reflect upon the design and implementation of services for international undergraduate students. Campus administrators and international education practitioners should design and implement initiatives that enable, confirm, and support interactions that foster the academic and interpersonal development of international students enrolled in SCUs.

Neoliberal ideology, as a structure of thought and as an economic project, has promoted the establishment of a new economic configuration through the creation of national conditions for free market and global competition. Within this economic rationale and work ideology, faculty members, considered as entrepreneurs, are evaluated and managed by their human capital, productivity, and their capacities to both deal with precarious work conditions and adjust to unstable and blurred job security levels.

The purpose of this qualitative investigation was to explore and explain the ways in which the presence of neoliberal ideology in public research universities (PRUs) influenced the academic profession, particularly the narratives, identities, and emotions of faculty members. This investigation explored the human-centered experiences and emotions of faculty members. This humanity was conceptualized and explored through the psychosocial, symbolic, and emotional aspects that influenced the professional development of faculty members. This professional development occurred across diverse and complementary stages of the academic professional life cycle. Guided by identity theory (Burke & Stets, 2009) this investigation explored the lived experiences of thirty-two faculty members across ranks (assistant, associate, full, and distinguished professors) and academic disciplines (the Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM fields).

Findings suggest that neoliberal ideology has led to three critical outcomes that shaped the narratives of faculty members at PRUs. The first outcome focused on precarious work conditions, characterized by job insecurity and financial instability. The second critical outcome was the increase in service role expectations. The final outcome of neoliberal ideology was reflected in the use and promotion of reward systems that highlighted competition and performativity based on the quantifiable measurement of productivity and performance. These reward systems have altered the values, norms, and practices of academic work and have reinforced psychological and emotional detrimental outcomes for faculty members, particularly for early career and mid-career faculty members.

The present research contributes to the higher education literature by providing the conceptualization of academic professional identities (APIs) and a description of the professional development of faculty members. In addition, this investigation explains the ways in which the presence of neoliberal values (of competition, performativity, and productivity) altered the symbolic world of faculty members—specifically APIs and emotions— at PRUs.

Over the first four years of college, students’ self-ratings on writing ability and motivation to perform well increase, while self-reports of physical and emotional health decrease during that same period (Astin, 1997). This qualitative investigation identifies and explains the environmental and cultural forces that shape and are shaped by health and wellness perspectives of students. Research questions for this investigation addressed students’ understandings of health and wellness and their influences. Two components of social reproduction theory, cultural capital and social capital, as well as culture theory, were utilized to understand the cultural and social origins of students’ perspectives on their ability to lead healthful lifestyles at their university. This investigation was undertaken at two large public universities in southern California where a combined total of 55 students and one staff member participated.

Findings suggest that both social and environmental factors play a significant role in students’ health behaviors. First, while educational practitioners and faculty can be a source of social capital for students (Winkle-Wagner, 2010), students at both campuses reported that campus resources associated with health and wellness, inclusive of administrative units, communications from administrative units, and campus-sponsored programs were of limited influence on students, if not completely ineffective. Second, in the absence of guidance from their universities, peer norms, which were perpetuated by social media, were influenced by and influenced student behavior. Third, the university environment (both physical and social), peer culture, and academic demands at both CRU and CCU pose significant challenges to student attempts to “get fit,” thereby resulting in a lack of agency in students’ ability to lead healthy lifestyles. Fourth, the word “health,” as conceived by students in this investigation, can more accurately be described as the ability to obtain a “fit” appearance or achieve an ideal body figure. The discourse of the body as a perpetual project was present in student conceptions of health in the university context.