Education Commons^™

Experiences With Student Loan Debt: A Phenomenological Study Of First-Generation, Low-Income College Graduates, Sarah Leigh Gardner Thomas

Doctoral Dissertations

First-generation and low-income (FGLI) individuals currently represent a large percentage of the total undergraduate student enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities. Student loan debt in the United States is also at an all-time high with approximately 43 million Americans sharing the $1.75 trillion total. Because FGLI individuals, like many other college students, often take on large amounts of student loan debt to successfully graduate college, it is worth learning more about the long-term effects that student loan debt has on the experiences of FGLI college graduates within the first ten years of graduating with a baccalaureate degree. The purpose of …

Developing An Instrument To Measure Food Insecurity Among College Students, Hannah Wright

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to develop a reliable and valid survey instrument to measure the prevalence and degree of food insecurity among college students with respect to their demographic characteristics. This survey instrument was piloted to a sample of college students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

The College Student Food Insecurity (CSFI) survey instrument was designed using a Likert format with 5 levels of agreement. Items for the CSFI were created through brainstorming, a review of the USDA Food Insecurity Modules, and a review of the literature with a focus on three concepts: access or awareness of …