Barely Scrapes the Surface: How Scholarship Receipt Complicates Holistic Supports for Community College STEM Students from Low-Income Backgrounds
by Xueli Wang, Yunwei Wang & Brit Wagner
Financial burden represents a long-standing challenge facing community college students from low-income families, especially those pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pathways. Accordingly, financial assistance has emerged as a major policy initiative, often offered in conjunction with wraparound support services, such as advising, tutoring, and structured course offerings. Although extant quantitative evidence has demonstrated the promise of financial aid as part of a holistic support structure, there is limited research on the ways in which financial aid interfaces with other types of supports, as well as the experiences of involved students and those in supporting roles. This qualitative case study delved into the lived experiences of individual students and faculty and staff in supporting roles within a new scholarship program at a small community college. Based on in-depth interviews as our primary data source, our findings show that providing financial support is not an omnipotent approach to fully supporting students. Instead, the students as scholarship recipients negotiated a complex set of expectations and assumptions from program faculty and staff who wrestled with an “ideal” student support model. Our study offers new insights toward robust and thoughtful holistic supportive systems that fully honor students’ holistic life contexts, challenges, and strengths.