Transgender students in higher education

Abstract

Current statistics on the number of openly transgender students attending two-year and four-year institutions of higher education are unknown, but research and surveys support that the number of transgender identified and gender non-conforming students is growing. College is often the first opportunity many gender variant students have to question their ascribed gender and explore different facets of their identities. However, these transgender students can be more vulnerable to harassment, oppression, and discrimination due to their transgender identity or expression. Transgender students are an underrepresented population who experience significant obstacles in educational and employment fields due to their transgender identities. Some examples of these obstacles, and consequently, places where universities can implement policies and procedures to support transgender students, include housing, access to health care and mental health services, legal name to chosen name and, in some cases, expulsion from school due to the transgender identity. In order to understand how transgender students make sense of their experiences an interpretive phenomenological study of five self-identified transgender students at an urban university in the northeastern United States was conducted. The primary question guiding this study is: How do transgender students, in the context of being a marginalized group in a dominant gender normative society, make sense of the college experience as it relates to identity development? Critical Theory was selected as the framework to examine the problem under investigation due to its ability to critique the applications of principles or values to make judgments for the purpose of creating positive change.