The University of Michigan is doing something that sounds obvious until you realize almost nobody does it: they're paying attention to first-gen students after the welcome week energy fades. The new First Fellows program gives first-gen sophomores mentoring, a dedicated course, and $4,000 for summer experiential learning. That last part matters more than the dollar amount suggests. Most support for first-gen students peaks early and evaporates by year two, right when the "I have no idea what I'm doing" feeling really sets in. Michigan's move treats sophomore year like what it actually is: the moment when the initial adrenaline wears off and the real questions about belonging, direction, and money start showing up.
There's a pattern here that feels familiar to anyone paying attention to how universities actually work. Support programs tend to be either broad and shallow or narrow and short. Heads Up, Cougs: New Academic Officer Survey Drops reminds us that institutions are constantly measuring what leaders think matters, but that's often a different thing from what students on the ground need. And when Utah University Apologizes After Dropping College Republicans Probe makes news, it's a reminder that campus politics can eat up a lot of oxygen. So when a program like First Fellows comes along with a specific timeline and a concrete check attached, it stands out because it's not performative. It's structural.
Here's the part I keep circling back to: the $4,000 for summer experiential learning. That's not pocket money. That's the difference between taking an unpaid internship and spending the summer serving coffee while your resume stays flat. For a first-gen student, the gap isn't usually ambition. It's that everyone else's family already knows how the game works. They know which internships matter, who to email, and how to talk about their experience afterward. A check doesn't fix all of that, but it removes the most common excuse. It says: we're not just going to tell you to dream big, we're going to help you pay for the ticket.
What I'd tell a reader asking whether this is worth watching: yes, but not because Michigan is special. It's worth watching because it's replicable. If this works, other schools won't have to invent a new model. They'll just have to admit that the first-year-only approach is a handshake when students need a roadmap. The mentoring piece is the part that's harder to scale, but it's also the part that makes the money land. You can hand a student $4,000 and say "go do something," but without someone who's been there to say "here's how you find the right opportunity and here's how you explain it on a resume," the money only goes so far. Michigan's bet is that the combination, not the parts, is what moves the needle.
The open question is whether other institutions will treat this as a pilot to learn from or a line item to envy. My guess is that the schools already paying attention to retention data will be the first to copy it, and the ones still running the same first-year seminar and calling it support will keep wondering why their sophomore numbers dip. The detail I'll be watching: how many of those First Fellows actually complete the summer experience, and whether the program expands past one cohort. That's the real test. Not whether it launches well, but whether it lasts long enough to become normal. That's how you know support is real. It's still there when the novelty wears off.
