What We Talk About When We Talk About First-Generation Students: Exploring Definitions in Use on College and University Websites

First-generation students (FGS) are a population that has received increasing attention, but the term has been inconsistently defined. Such inconsistency creates challenges not only for research, but for students themselves, many of whom may find they meet the FGS definition in one institutional context, but not another. In this study, we analyze how the term first-generation student is defined on the public websites of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada and discuss implications for students and academic libraries.