Exploring the Relationship Between Resource Allocations and Student Success Programs from the Perspectives of Student Affairs Staff

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the racial dynamics of the resource allocation process for co-curricular student success programs, the experiences of Student Affairs staff who work with these programs, and the implications this has on their efforts to support student success. Interviews with professionals from various student success programs at one large, public, historically White university revealed the relationship between student participant demographics and the resources their programs are allocated, as well as how this relationship reinforces Whiteness and racial capitalism through institutional logics, which rationalize and perpetuate resource inequities across centralized university retention programming. Racialized resource inequities across student success programming and the meaning making staff generated from strategic plan funding, space, and staffing for programs which explicitly support Students of Color compared to programs which are designed for all students was uncovered. Implications regarding the efforts of staff to disrupt narratives which reinforce systemic racialized inequities are discussed.