Homeless not hopeless: understanding how graduate students who experience homelessness and housing insecurity successfully navigate their education

Abstract

Obtaining a college degree and, even more so, a graduate degree is a critical component of many people's American dream. For some completing a graduate degree is a milestone of success. However, due to rising tuition and housing costs, as well as other compounding factors such as food insecurity, for many, this dream may be deferred. According to the National Center for Homeless Education (2017), for the 2016-2017 academic year, more than 30,000 college students reported on their Free Application for Federal Student Aid that they experienced homelessness or housing insecurity. Like this grim statistic, much of the current discourse on homelessness and housing insecurity in higher education is deficit-centered. Focusing on such deficits overlooks the experiences of students who face challenges yet persist. Despite the mounting fiscal pressures and the fact that housing insecurity and homelessness can present extreme barriers to college completion, there are students whose stories portray a different narrative. To challenge deficit thinking, this study employed Harper's (2010) anti-deficit achievement framework to understand how students, specifically graduate students who experience homelessness or housing insecurity, successfully navigate their educational journey. It also explored what academic interactions and experiential opportunities with peers and institutional agents contribute to their persistence and academic achievement. I used narrative inquiry to gather the stories of five graduate students either currently or recently enrolled at a large Midwest land-grant public research-intensive university. Findings indicated that for these graduate students (1) hope; (2) family; (3) friends; (4) determination; (5) institutional agents; (6) a desire to give back to their communities; (7) campus and community resources; (8) and faith all contributed to participants success in simultaneously navigating their graduate journey and their experiences with homelessness and housing insecurity.