Barriers within: Examining gender, race, and participation in the TRIO program with college success

Abstract

In today's society earning a college education plays an extraordinarily important role in obtaining a living wage and thus is of importance for every individual. However, cross disciplinary research has found that gender, ethnicity, and academic and socio-economic backgrounds play a role in how well a student performs in college. The TRIO program is a federally-funded, national effort to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds complete their degree. Given these students are from an already disadvantaged background, this study looks inside the cohort and finds that race and gender have significant correlations with cumulative GPA for first year participants, regardless of adjusting for academic and socio-economic backgrounds. The study further examines TRIO students and their length of participation in the TRIO program and finds that participation is significantly and positively correlated with increases in cumulative GPA, especially for students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.