The first thing Ximena Toxqui recounts when looking back on her freshman year at Cornell University was that she was “usually the only Latina in the class.”
“I do remember this one time I was in my physics lab and I was in a group of five with four other white girls,” Toxqui tells The Progressive. “They all were just talking to each other, and I was out of the conversation. They were talking about their parents, how they were traveling, or in Europe right now, and I just felt like that was a moment where I was different from everyone else because I didn’t share those same experiences.”
Students from low-income households or whose parents didn’t attend college—known collectively as first generation, low-income (FGLI) students—often describe feeling alone or singled out, especially at elite universities where they are surrounded by peers from wealthier backgrounds. While Ivy League universities claim to uplift FGLI students as part of their core missions, it wasn’t until 2014 that this became concrete. That year, a group of undergraduates at Brown University founded the advocacy organization 1vyG, which launched a series of inter-university conferences addressing FGLI struggles. In response, Ivy League schools began to implement programs to address the unique needs of FGLI students. Through FGLI student centers, universities provide academic and career guidance to students, such as FLI @ Columbia University, which provides FGLI students with professional development, or the Scholars Institute Fellows Program at Princeton University, where students join mentorship groups with upperclassmen to discuss their struggles and experiences in weekly meetings. These centers also provide financial opportunities, such as the Library Resource Liaisons program at the University of Pennsylvania, which offers students work-study positions during the school year.
But since President Donald Trump took office in January, his administration’s crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives has exacerbated the inequities between FGLI students and their classmates, forcing many young people to adjust to their college experiences with less specialized support amid a tumultuous political climate.
Among Ivy League universities, FGLI initiatives typically include pre-orientation programs and student centers focused on helping students navigate the “hidden curriculum” of academic customs such as add/drop periods, attending office hours, and auditing classes. These programs have, at times, faced criticism by FGLI students themselves for not doing enough to improve their academic experience, or for their lack of meaningful ethnic and cultural diversity. Nevertheless, they have played an important role in building community for FGLI students by bringing them together to bond over shared experiences.
Leonardo Quispe, an independent filmmaker and recent alumnus of Brown University, tells The Progressive that he participated in FGLI programming to seek community within the “bubble” of the school’s economically stratified student body. “I chose to be a part of a cohort, which at the time was called FLiSP, First-Gen Low-Income Scholars Program,” he says. “I immediately was into that because I wanted to take advantage of as many things as I could to find community.”
The Ivy League has increased its FGLI student representation in recent years: About 12 percent of Ivy League students in the class of 2018 were first generation, and the number has risen to 18 percent for the class of 2028, according to data released from the universities. Yet, these schools continue to feel out of reach for many lower-income students across the country. In the United States, the average cost of tuition fees with room and board among Ivy League universities is currently around $90,400—a nearly 50 percent increase over the past decade, according to financial reports the universities have released. Federal grants and loan programs, such as the Pell Grant or Parent Loans for Undergraduate Students (PLUS), have not kept up with these rising costs, leaving many families to shoulder the exorbitant cost of higher education.
While college has become more and more financially inaccessible, many of the country’s most elite and expensive private institutions also offer some of the most generous financial aid packages for students, oftentimes covering the full cost of tuition for those from low-income families. According to The Brown Daily Herald’s calculations for the 2022-2023 school year, half of Ivy League schools report that more than 50 percent of their students receive financial aid packages from their universities.
But despite these shifts, students from families with incomes in the top 1 percent are still overrepresented at elite universities. According to a study from Opportunity Insights, a team of scholars from Harvard University that publishes economic research in the United States, an applicant’s wealthy background can increase their chances of being accepted into elite private colleges by almost 34 percent. So while many top schools now boast commitment to providing full financial aid for students in need, the assistance they promise is offered to very few, as the number of students from the top 1 percent rivals, or in some cases even exceeds, that of students from the bottom 60 percent at many elite colleges.
Now, the combined impact of the Trump Administration’s anti-FGLI initiatives and the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against affirmative action in college admissions has left students from marginalized backgrounds with fewer resources and a less welcoming climate on campus. In April, Harvard University changed the name of its Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging to the Office of Culture & Community; Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University have since followed suit in removing mentions of DEI from their websites. The retreat from DEI has extended beyond changes in language or marketing, as well—Harvard, for example, announced over the summer that it would no longer be designating residential advisors and tutors that have previously offered specific support for LGBTQ+ and FGLI students.
Without access to programs that allow FGLI students to find and build community, Toxqui says, these students are left with one less avenue to keep each other informed of the impact of Trump’s policies on their communities back home. Toxqui notes, however, that FGLI students at her school have planned information sessions and awareness campaigns in order to keep each other safe, especially as the Trump Administration becomes increasingly invested in who these universities admit. Toxqui highlights the work of student organizations such as Cornell University’s La Asociación Latina (LAL), which consist of predominantly first-generation students, in light of widespread Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.
“[LAL] did a teach-in on the history of Mexican Independence Day,” Toxqui says, “as well as bringing awareness to what is going on with the ICE raids, and just recognizing that some cities usually celebrate by having parades in Los Angeles or Chicago. They’re having to cancel their events, and most of us are from these places, so they affect our families.”
By organizing these workshops, she says, first-generation communities on campus join forces in recognizing the reality of what’s been happening across the county, and “can come together by sharing the same experience.”
In the first year following the 2023 affirmative action reversal, college enrollment of Black and Hispanic students declined after years of consistent growth. Toxqui and Quispe both report that the change in student demographics since this reversal has been noticeable on their respective campuses.
“I’m meeting some freshmen now, and they seem very eager” Toxqui says, “but also we’re able to see the decline as well with Latinos on campus.” Despite the fact that Cornell had its biggest incoming freshman class this year, she notes, there has been a marked decrease in the proportion of students from marginalized backgrounds.
FGLI student centers are seeing “less and less first-gen low-income students, or [students from backgrounds] that don’t typically get to go to college like that,” Quispe notes. “Suddenly a center like that becomes very important.”
At elite institutions like Ivy League schools, where wealth trumps diversity, FGLI students are still able to find pockets of solace among their peers. As FGLI infrastructure—such as peer tutoring, mentorship programs, and work-study opportunities—begin to disappear, these students will find themselves having to navigate university life without a support system.
“I definitely think these places exist for a reason,” Quispe adds, reflecting on the impact FGLI initiatives had on his time at Brown. While student organizations, such as First-Gens @ Brown, are valuable to improving FGLI student life, Quispe finds that university-driven programming ultimately “gives people more resources than [First-Gens @ Brown] probably could have ever provided.”