2008 Reports

Do Support Services at Community Colleges Encourage Success or Reproduce Disadvantage?

Karp, Melinda Jane Mechur; O'Gara, Lauren; Hughes, Katherine Lee

This study examines the ways that student support services in community colleges inadvertently perpetuate and legitimate disadvantage. Using interview data from students at two colleges in the northeast, we find that although support services are open to all students, only those who come to the college with pre-existing social and cultural resources can take advantage of them. However, because they are presented as open-access, students not able to make use of support services interpret their failure to progress toward a degree as personal, rather than structural.