Surviving Graduate School: A Three-Paper Exploration of Latinx Graduate Students’ Basic Needs

As the college student population is becoming more ethnically and racially diverse, the faculty population is not increasing at the same rate. Graduate education is critical in supporting the faculty pathway and is an understudied area in higher education literature. Graduate education is slowly becoming more diverse; however, Latinx students remain underrepresented (U.S. Department of Education, 2019). The existing literature on Latinx graduate students focuses on the academic experience, such as socialization (Amlink & Edwards, 2020; Ramirez, 2017), student experiences (Gildersleeve et al., 2011; Phelps-Ward, 2022; Ramirez, 2017), and social support (Bañuelos & Flores, 2021; Santa-Ramirez, 2022). There is minimal research on nonacademic factors that shape the graduate student experience. Prior research has highlighted the importance of meeting one’s basic needs (i.e., food, housing, and safety) for academic success (A. Martinez et al., 2018; Silva et al., 2017). We know little about how Latinx or graduate students experience basic needs. Given the importance of meeting one’s basic needs, this phenomenon is an important area of research.This three-paper dissertation broadly explored how Latinx graduate students experience basic needs. In the first paper, I conducted an integrative literature review on Latinx graduate student success from 2004 to 2024. I explored how research has studied Latinx graduate student success by examining the environmental barriers, the role of social support, psychological experiences, and tensions in the socialization process. Second, through written and oral testimonios with 16 Latinx doctoral students, I sought to understand how Latinx graduate students experience basic needs using Latinx Critical Race Theory. Findings suggest that Latinx graduate students experienced basic needs insecurity, which was exacerbated by institutional policies, practice, and the larger sociopolitical contexts. The third paper employed Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005) to understand how Latinx graduate students accessed resources to meet their basic needs. The findings from testimonios illuminated how Latinx graduate students employed survival strategies when their graduate assistantship stipends fell short, relying on government resources, institutional resources, and a strong community of peers to meet their needs. They also turned to Women of Color faculty, who used their social capital to connect students to additional resources and provided holistic support. Together, these separate and interrelated studies highlight the insufficient financial support from institutions that made it difficult for students to meet their nutritional needs, afford a safe place to live, and forced students into unsafe situations. I offer implications for research and practice and include tangible ways institutions can better support Latinx graduate students. With the collaborators, we illuminate the oppressive structures and put forth a call to action to make graduate education more equitable.