ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1569432
This article is part of the Research TopicCulturally Inclusive Capacity-Building to Enhance Underrepresented College Students' OutcomesView all articles
Historically Underrepresented Students: Influences of Rurality, Parent Education Level and Family Income on Graduate School Intentions
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Tennessee, Knoxville, United States
- 2University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, United States
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Despite increasing rates of graduate school attendance, students from historically underrepresented backgrounds enroll in graduate programs at lower rates than their peers. Although there is a growing body of research on current graduate students' perspectives on what impacted their decision to pursue graduate education, few studies have examined the intention to pursue graduate education specifically among second-and third-year undergraduate students from first-generation, rural, and/or low-income backgrounds. Our study investigated the predictive roles of self-efficacy, outcome expectations, mentoring, and belongingness on students' intentions to pursue graduate education. Only the two social cognitive variables, self-efficacy and outcome expectations, emerged as significant predictors of graduate school intention. We discuss these findings in relation to cultural factors and provide recommendations for future research and practice in higher education.
Keywords: Graduate education, underrepresented students, Social cognitive career theory, first-generation college students (FGCS), Rural students
Received: 31 Jan 2025; Accepted: 12 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sexton, Gibbons, Hardin, Cook, Hoch and Ault. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Melinda M. Gibbons, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, United States
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