By: Zach Miller

More first-generation college students are seeking admission to four-year institutions than at any earlier point in recent decades. Data from NASPA’s FirstGen Forward initiative shows that first-gen students are now submitting college applications at twice the rate of their continuing-generation peers. The application numbers have moved. The graduation numbers have not kept pace.

J-P Conte, whose philanthropic work has long focused on first-generation student success, has directed his attention precisely at that gap. Getting students to submit applications is one kind of problem. Ensuring they have the resources, mentorship, and institutional support to earn a degree is a different one and, in his view, the more important one to solve.

Conte graduated from Colgate University as the first in his family to earn a college degree. That experience has shaped how he thinks about what support actually requires. “My dad came to the United States, and he didn’t go to college,” he has said. “But he always had a dream of his kids going to college and becoming anything they wanted to be.”

Why Do First-Gen Students Face a Completion Gap?

According to NASPA’s FirstGen Forward, roughly 8.2 million first-generation students are currently enrolled as undergraduates, making up 54 percent of all college students in the U.S. Yet the same data shows first-gen students graduate at a rate of 24 percent, against 59 percent for students whose parents attended college. A 2025 Common App report tracking enrollment and completion data from the National Student Clearinghouse found that first-gen students are twice as likely to exit college without a degree, even among those who arrive academically prepared and from higher-income households.

The forces behind that gap are not primarily academic. Students who are the first in their families to attend college frequently arrive without a working knowledge of how universities function: how financial aid appeals work, how to find a mentor, which offices to turn to when problems arise. Financial pressure compounds everything else. Research on college dropout patterns has found that nearly 60 percent of students who left school had considered quitting due to financial stress.

Conte has described this as an information gap: the distance between students who arrive on campus with inherited institutional knowledge and those who must build that knowledge from scratch. “It’s about closing the information gap and giving these students the support they need to succeed,” he has said.

How the Conte First Generation Fund Was Built

J-P Conte did not approach university partnerships as a straightforward donation process. He describes having visited and evaluated each institution individually before committing support, looking specifically for schools that had genuine infrastructure for first-generation students rather than nominal programs. “I interviewed each school, visited each school, and learned that some of the schools were really good at it, good at providing resources, attracting that talent, and even mentoring that talent while they were at school,” he has said. “Other schools didn’t have the resources or the focus to do it.”

The result is a fund active at 11 universities, including his alma mater, Colgate University, and Harvard, built around scholarships paired with mentorship. For Conte, funding without accompanying guidance leaves students underserved. “When I was at Colgate, less than 5% of the population were first-gen students like me. I want to make sure those students are starting off from a place where they will succeed,” he has said.

What Closing the Gap Would Actually Mean

The economic stakes of the completion problem are substantial. FirstGen Forward calculates that bringing first-generation graduation rates in line with continuing-generation rates would add 4.4 million college graduates to the workforce and deliver a net economic benefit of $700 billion. College graduates are also 88 percent more likely to be employed and carry higher lifetime earnings than those without degrees.

Conte has situated his own philanthropic approach within this kind of thinking. “To be a business builder, you need to be optimistic about the future, and you need to know you can have an impact on things by sheer hard work or thinking about things differently. Bringing those characteristics into my philanthropy has really helped,” he has said.

Why Starting Before College Matters

A significant turn in J-P Conte’s approach came when he concluded that support arriving at the university level, while valuable, was reaching students too late. The preparation gap between first-generation students and their peers builds long before a college application goes out, through the years when students without professional networks at home are absorbing a narrower picture of the careers and institutions available to them.

That conclusion led him toward partnerships with programs like Sponsors for Educational Opportunity and 10,000 Degrees, which engage students as early as middle school. “A light went off, and I came to the conclusion that I need to start sooner, in high school or earlier, to really help change the trajectory,” he has said.

His support for those programs runs alongside the Conte First Generation Fund rather than substituting for it. Both address the same pipeline at different points: one works to close the preparation gap before it sets in, the other provides a foundation once students arrive on campus. “I remember being a student at Colgate and being the first in my family to go to college,” he has said. “I want to make sure students like me are able to succeed.”