Global Perspectives on First-Generation Students: Laura Perna Joins HSE Panel on Educational Inequality
The session was moderated by Associate Professor Vera Maltseva, who emphasized that the challenges faced by first-generation students in Russia remain largely invisible in public discourse, despite their significance for understanding social mobility and educational inequality.
The keynote speaker was Anastasia Lukina, Junior Research Fellow at the Center for the Development of Skills and Vocational Education at the HSE Institute of Education. Her presentation introduced findings from both qualitative and quantitative studies on the educational trajectories of first-generation students in the Chelyabinsk region. Lukina identified three key narratives that shape students’ decisions to pursue university education: the spontaneous, the pragmatic, and the self-development narrative. These narratives, she argued, are supported by broader cultural and social structures, including the influence of teachers and indicators such as academic performance.
Lukina also shared results from a longitudinal quantitative analysis, showing that upward social mobility among first-generation students is closely linked to the internalization of middle-class values and awareness of both structural constraints and meritocratic incentives.
The second speaker, Professor Laura Perna (University of Pennsylvania), presented a comparative view from the U.S. context. She highlighted persistent disparities in access to higher education despite the overall expansion of college attendance. Perna underscored the critical role of social and financial barriers and the importance of institutional support for students from low-income and non-college-educated family backgrounds. In addition to that, the speakers discussed differences in educational pathways across national contexts, the role of tuition-free vs. paid higher education systems, the impact of institutional selectivity on student experience and the importance of early support mechanisms during the school-to-college transition.
The session concluded with a call to build a public research agenda focused on the experiences of first-generation students and a broader academic and societal understanding of educational inequality in Russia.