ABSTRACT
This chapter examines literature on sociodemographic characteristics and college student persistence, retention, and graduation from the past 10 years. It integrates literature on individual-level factors and institutional and macro-level factors to discuss disparities in college student persistence, retention, and graduation across sociodemographic characteristics. The chapter discusses scholarship and research from the past decade that offer critical perspectives on college student persistence, retention, and graduation across sociodemographic characteristics. It focuses on asset-based, intersectional, and structural perspectives and approaches to scholarship and research on college student persistence, retention, and graduation over the past decade and how this body of research could address educational inequities. First-generation college students and students who are from poor and working-class backgrounds are often conflated in higher education scholarship.
