Date of Award
Fall 2020
Degree Type
Open Access Dissertation
Degree Name
Education, PhD
Program
School of Educational Studies
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
Linda Perkins
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Mary Poplin
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Gilda Ochoa
Terms of Use & License Information
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Rights Information
© 2020 Eric M. Michael
Keywords
community college, stereotype threat, stigma, transfer, transition, UMass
Subject Categories
Community College Education Administration | Education | Higher Education
Abstract
Despite impressive statistics related to community college transfer student achievement, negative perceptions and stigma attached to attending community college persist. The problem addressed by this phenomenological study is the community college stigma experience for transfer students attending the most highly-ranked public university in Massachusetts: UMass Amherst. This dissertation pioneers use of a conceptual framework built from the elements of stereotype threat to illustrate experienced community college stigma; Specifically, it begins to address the forty-year-old unsubstantiated contention of William Neumann and David Riesman, that there is less stigma attached to attending community college in California than in Massachusetts. Broken down to its core elements, the situational phenomenon of stereotype threat includes 1.) existence of a stigmatized group, 2.) a situational “trigger” causing members of the stigmatized group (“targets”) concern about being judged or treated negatively on the basis of that stigma, and 3.) a consequential impact on a target’s immediate performance, self-perception, identity, and/or sense of belonging. Phenomenological analysis of interview data for 20 current students found the lived experience for community college transfer students attending UMass spans three distinct periods: Pre-UMass, the Community college-to-UMass transition, and Being a UMass community college transfer student. Elements of the stereotype threat framework presented themselves during each period of students’ lived experience, suggesting community college transfer students attending UMass are a stigmatized group susceptible to potential consequences of chronic stereotype threat. (i.e. domain dis-identification and domain abandonment). This examination of students’ stigma experience in Massachusetts justifies replication at a highly-ranked public university in California, so as to definitively support or contradict Neumann and Riesman’s decades old contention.
ISBN
9798557030472
Recommended Citation
Michael, Eric M.. (2020). Exploring Community College Stigma: A Phenomenology of the Lived Experience for Community College Transfer Students Attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 247. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/247.
