ABSTRACT

Latinxs are the second largest racial-ethnic group in the United States, yet they make up only 7% of all doctoral degree recipients. Latinx undergraduates are predominantly first-generation college students, who often have limited professional networks to guide their pathways into graduate school. Drawing on interviews with 25 first-generation Latinx college students, this study examines the ways they narrate professors’ influence in their pathways towards enrolling in doctoral programs. We find that first-generation Latinx students’ pathways into doctoral programs are heavily shaped by professors in the following ways: 1) institutional support; 2) disrupting or perpetuating the doctoral student archetype and; 3) social location congruence. Our analysis underscores that professors’ of any social location can provide networks and instrumental support, but Latinx doctoral students’ narrate their social capital, is tied to, and strengthened by, their Latinx co-ethnic professors’ possession of instrumental support, social networks, and relevant experiential knowledge and a critical consciousness.

摘要

拉丁裔是美国第二大种族，但他们仅占所有博士学位获得者的 7%。拉丁裔本科生主要是第一代大学生，他们通常只有有限的专业网络来指导他们进入研究生院的途径。本研究通过对 25 名第一代拉丁裔大学生的采访，考察了他们讲述教授对他们攻读博士课程的影响的方式。我们发现第一代拉丁裔学生进入博士课程的途径在以下方面受到教授的严重影响：1）制度支持；2) 破坏或延续博士生原型；3) 社会位置一致性。以及相关的经验知识和批判意识。