Not so different and not deficient: First- and continuing-generation students' selves and self-discrepancies

Previous research has often portrayed first-generationcollege students – students whose parents do not havea four-year university degree – through a deficit lens, de-picting them as lacking in skills, knowledge or potentialcompared to continuing-generation students. It, however,remains unknown how first-generation and continuing-generation students perceive themselves with respect totheir own goals and obligations. Who do they want to beand to what extent do they think of themselves as meetingtheir own goals and obligations? To answer these questions,we assessed students' ideal and ought selves, as well as self-discrepancies, based on Higgins's theory (Higgins, 1987), ina relatively large sample of students in the US (N = 1244)across three waves. Overall, we found no significant differ-ences in the content of ideal and ought selves, or perceivedself-discrepancies between first-generation and continuing-generation students. Responses were strikingly similar, withboth groups mentioning almost identical characteristics fortheir ideal and ought selves. Furthermore, there were no sig-nificant differences in ideal or ought self-discrepancies be-tween the two groups of students. Despite common deficitnarratives, first-generation students did not think of them-selves as being further away from their aspired selves thancontinuing-generation students.