Chapter 11: Redefining Success: The Postcollege Career Experiences of First-Generation Adult College Graduates

It seems that the path to, through, and beyond college was once more straightforward. The young adult, often a product of some sort of privileged background or benefactor, “went off to college” and emerged four years later to work in a career, equipped with an education that would suffice until retirement. This nostalgic view of the past is almost certainly an illusion, a function of collective forgetfulness or academic myopia. Regardless, this vision stands in stark contrast to the current landscape of higher education and career trajectories. A broadened understanding of the college experience (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005), a recognition that adult and nontraditional learners make up an increasing proportion of almost every student body (Chao, DeRocco, & Flynn, 2007), and a rapidly changing employment landscape (Dresang, 2008; Hanneman & Gardner, 2010) suggest that neither the college experience nor college outcomes should be discussed in one-size-fits-all terms.