Issues Facing Transgender College Students — #TransgenderFirst

The #TransgenderFirst scholarship is the first national scholarship to seek to directly combat the systemic issues that transgender college students face.

Everyone should have the opportunity to seek an education in their designated career or interest. According to the APLU (Association of Public and Land Grant Universities), college attendance both highly benefits an individual and the society surrounding them. For example, graduates with at least a bachelor’s degree are nearly 25% more likely to be employed, 3.5x less likely to live in poverty, and 5x less likely to be in prison. However, many people find it extraordinarily difficult to access college, especially marginalized communities.

Transgender people, in particular, suffer from several key barriers that impact them specifically while seeking higher education. Colleges are built with a system meant for, and intended to benefit cisgendered people. For example, higher institutions use legal names as the basis of identity. This inherently makes applying and navigating the issue of name more daunting and complicated for transgender people than their cisgendered counterparts have to deal with. But this example is far from alone–here are all of the steps in which a transgender person might find themselves impeded while working to access academia.

• Application Issues: From the very beginning, it is difficult for a transgender person to navigate the process of applying to college. Whether to use their legal name, their old name (if different from legal), or their preferred name can be a difficult gamble, as colleges may deny your application if they feel like you are lying or misleading information. Additionally, a trans person may have the same concerns over which gender or sex to list, or if they should out themselves as transgender or not.  

• Legal Issues: Many college-aged transgender people are navigating legal issues for the first time, such as working to change their name or legal sex. This process occurs both within the primary legal system and through secondary institutions like at their banking, health, and credit card systems. Any of these can create a hurdle or delay for a student doing anything from filing for a FAFSA or paying tuition for their classes. Likewise, they may have daunting legal webs and concerns over their head that prevent them from focusing as well on classes. 

• Housing Issues: Transgender people are often put in an uncomfortable situation when it comes to housing: Should they be placed with their birth sex and feel forced into the closet, or risk assault or complaints by dorming with the opposite sex? In most colleges, transgender people are only seen as an afterthought, and they have to step out of their comfort to reach out to rooming advisors to advocate for their own concerns, which can be exhaustive and fruitless.

• Job Issues: Compared to their cisgendered counterparts, it’s much more difficult for transgender people to be hired for, or maintain jobs. While it is technically illegal to discriminate against trans people in unemployment, most employers will reject transgender applicants outright, or find other reasons to terminate them from employment. Since it’s harder from the onset for a trans person to obtain employment, it’s even more difficult for them to access the healthcare and financial stability needed to pursue college.
  
• Interdisciplinary Issues: On top of being trans/LGBT many students have interdisciplinary issues, conditions, or arise from other marginalized groups that compound their experience. For example, issues like being trans and being a wheelchair user can make finding a unisex, accessible bathroom even more difficult.