Minority-Status Stresses and the College Adjustment of Ethnic Minority Freshmen

Abstract

In the ten-year period between 1969 and 1979, minority students enrolled in predominantly White colleges in increasing numbers, due in part to the greater access afforded by affirmative action programs |14~. Since the early 1980s, however, there has been a disturbing regressive trend in the enrollment, academic performance, and retention of these students. For example, African-American and other non-Asian minority students attending predominantly White colleges are less likely to graduate within five years, have lower grade point averages, experience higher attrition rates, and matriculate into graduate programs at lower rates than White students and their counterparts at predominantly Black or minority institutions |3, 6~.(*) Efforts to account for these regressive trends suggest that intellective and academic background factors (that is, aptitude test scores, high-school preparation, and so on) and non-cognitive, contextual, and socio-cultural factors may be differentially associated with the college adjustment and performance of minority and non-minority students |6, 23, 26, 29, 35, 36~. For example, African-American students are more likely than Whites to view predominantly White campuses as hostile, alienating, and socially isolating |1, 2, 4, 10, 16, 28, 30, 34, 35, 36~, and as less responsive to their needs and interests |4~. African-American students have also been found to experience greater estrangement from the campus community |16, 34~ and heightened discomfort in interactions with faculty and peers |20, 30~. In addition, Tracey and Sedlacek |35~ and Nettles, Theony, and Gosman |27~ have found that the academic adjustment and achievement of African-American and other minority students are influenced by different sociocultural and contextual factors (for example, student satisfaction with college, peer group relations) than those that have an impact on White students. In order to define conceptually how these factors might contribute to minority student college adjustment, we have proposed a multidimensional stress-coping model |33~ which identifies three sets of factors as important in minority college student adjustment and achievement: (1) individual attributes that enhance or moderate students' vulnerability to academic failure (for example, academic preparation, intelligence, self-confidence, social maturity); (2) the psychological and sociocultural stresses students face during their academic careers (for example, stresses that are experienced on campus, in the community, and so on); and (3) the strategies students use to cope with these stresses (for example, individual and group appraisals of stresses and the strategies used to cope with them). Consistent with a transactional model of stress and coping |22~, we view the types of stresses experienced, the coping styles used, and the outcomes obtained as mutually interacting. Consequently, the pattern of relationships among these variables are likely to vary as a function of individual, group, and college campus characteristics. We also note that many of the experiences reported by minority students at predominantly White colleges are experienced by and affect all college students and are integral to the role of college student (for example, academic demands, relationship problems, financial worries, and so on). These student role strains constitute a generic pathway of influences and contribute to college maladjustment for all students. However, these generic role strains should be distinguished from the more unique stresses experienced by minority students that heighten feelings of not belonging and interfere with minority students' effective integration into the university community (for example, experiences with racism, questions about their right to be on campus). These experiences are conceptualized as minority status stresses and constitute a separate and additional pathway of risk for maladjustment (that is, an additional stress load). …