Cultural discontinuity and the college experience of ethnic minority students

Many students face cultural discontinuity while transitioning secondary school to college. But, cultural discontinuity is more pronounce to minority and students from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds (Ogbu, 1982). The prevalent cultural norms of universities match students from middle-class backgrounds and mismatch students from working-class background. The institutionalized culture systematically produces and maintains the existing social hierarchy (Stephens, Fryberg, Markus, Johnson & Covarrubias, 2012). Students who experience continuance to the institutionalized cultural norms they experience greater psychological well-being, more engaged academically and as a result they perform better. On the other hand, ethnic minority students face more adjustment problem and also start questioning whether they belong and succeed. Generally students from disadvantaged background attend low quality high school; while they transition to college they often need extra effort such as tutoring and social support. Ethnic minority students before college they experience less academic exposure and did not access much middle-class cultural norms, thus, they experience cultural discontinuity in higher education. The paper argues ethnic minority students academic underperformance is because they experiencing cultural discontinuity. The findings address the cultural obstacles and provide implication to minimize the social-class achievement gap. Fewer empirical studies have been conducted on this area, thus much more research is needed.