Access Isn’t Readiness: How First-Gen Students Build Financial Confidence

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In 1993, Dr. Charmaine Troy arrived at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a summer bridge program with $20 in her pocket. Her stipend wouldn’t arrive for two weeks. When it did, she spent it in about one — buying clothes because looking like she belonged felt more urgent than making the money last.

“I walked onto that campus admitted, enrolled, and in college,” she says. “But what I did not understand was the financial systems I was expected to navigate.”

That experience became the thesis of her career: access is not the same thing as readiness. Dr. Troy has spent more than 15 years in higher education, building first-generation student success programs at three institutions — Georgia Gwinnett College, Virginia Tech, and Georgia Tech. She’s the author of No One Told Me About Money: Building Financial Confidence as a First-Generation Student, and the founder of First Gen Talks, a mobile platform that pairs technology and coaching to advance financial literacy and college success.

In this episode of Next Practices, Dr. Troy makes the case that financial stress isn’t a side issue for institutions to route to the financial aid office. It’s often the first sign that a student is struggling, but many institutions don’t recognize it until it’s too late.

Why College Access Isn’t the Same as College Readiness

Colleges have invested heavily in helping first-generation students get into college. They’ve spent far less time helping them navigate what happens once they arrive.

“We spend a lot of time celebrating first-gen students getting in the door,” Dr. Troy says. “We do not ask the question about how they stay.” How do they manage a refund check? Handle an emergency expense? Stretch money across a semester when the hidden costs of college keep surfacing?

For Dr. Troy, none of this is hypothetical. She entered college without anyone to explain the financial systems she was expected to navigate. No one in her family had been through them before. That’s the gap institutions inherit with every first-gen student they admit. The question is whether they treat it as the student’s problem or the institution’s design challenge.

How Does Scarcity Mindset Limit Opportunities for First-Generation Students?

Scarcity is usually framed as a lack of money. Dr. Troy argues it runs deeper: “Scarcity can also be a lack of permission to dream bigger than what they have seen coming from home.”

That shows up in ways institutions rarely track. Students under-select opportunities — skipping competitive internships, fellowships, study abroad, and leadership roles that feel too far from the world they came from. A student working to send money home will choose tonight’s shift over a networking mixer every time, trading long-term mobility for immediate income.

There’s an emotional layer, too. “For first-gen students, dreaming bigger can feel like leaving people behind,” Dr. Troy says. Students wonder: If I succeed, will I become different from my family? Will they still understand me? Scarcity, she explains, isn’t just financial — it’s emotional and generational, shaping how students see money, opportunity, risk, and belonging.

The First Gen Opportunity Pathway: A Four-Part Framework for Financial Confidence

In No One Told Me About Money, Dr. Troy lays out the First Gen Opportunity Pathway — built on the premise that money is rarely just about money. It’s about access, exposure, skills, and opportunity, which ultimately lead to income.

Where do institutions get stuck? “They jump straight to information,” Dr. Troy says — a one-time financial literacy workshop instead of a full pathway.

Why One-Time Financial Literacy Workshops Don’t Work for College Students

Higher ed tends to treat financial literacy as a financial aid problem — something a bursar’s office or a workshop can solve. Dr. Troy is direct about why that falls short: financial aid is only one piece of a student’s financial picture.

“Financial aid can help a student pay the bill,” she says, “but it does not teach them how to manage the refund.” It doesn’t help students decide whether to work more hours or take more credits. It doesn’t address credit cards, family financial pressure, emergency expenses, food insecurity — or the shame of not having enough.

The research backs her up: financial stress affects far more than a bank account. It’s tied to mental health, sense of belonging, academic performance, and integration into campus life. A student whose financial needs aren’t met puts academics on the back burner and skips the social experiences that build belonging. That’s why Dr. Troy argues financial confidence belongs inside the broader student success strategy — first-year experience, advising, career development, and persistence planning — not siloed in one office.

Why Students Stop Out of College — and What Retention Data Misses

Asked what she’d want every provost or VP of student affairs to understand about their stop-out data, Dr. Troy doesn’t hesitate:

Students rarely stop out in a single moment. They stop out gradually — when a refund is delayed, when they can’t afford a textbook, when extra shifts mean missed classes, when they’re embarrassed about a balance or don’t understand what a hold is. By the time the institution sees a registration gap or an unpaid balance, there’s a long chain of small financial, emotional, and informational breakdowns underneath it.

The institutions that get it right, she says, do three things. They move from programs to ecosystems — building structure across advising, financial aid, career services, faculty, and student affairs, informed by data. They listen to students before designing solutions. And they understand that first-gen support is an institutional strategy. “First-gen students are resilient, talented, and motivated,” Dr. Troy says. “But resilience should not be the institution’s retention plan.”

The real difference comes down to a question of design: does the institution see first-gen students as students who need to be fixed — or does it see itself as a system that needs to be redesigned?

Want to see how institutions detect early signals of financial and academic risk — while there’s still time to act? Explore the Student Impact Platform or contact us to talk with our team.

Links & Resources

• Dr. Charmaine Troy (website)
• Dr. Charmaine Troy (LinkedIn)
• FirstGenTalks (website)
• No One Told Me About Money: Building Financial Confidence as a First-Generation Student