The Assets of Transgender College Students in the United States: A Scoping Review

Amid growing political hostility toward transgender rights in U.S. education, this scoping review synthesizes scholarship on transgender college students through an asset-based lens. Drawing from 153 empirical studies published since 2003, including a 62-study asset-focused analytic subset, we identify research that highlights transgender students’ resilience, agency, and thriving within higher education. Findings reveal six recurring asset domains through which transgender students cultivate kinship, mobilize navigational knowledge, practice resilience, pursue affirming contexts, engage in advocacy, and reimagine identity and futures. While most studies have emphasized disparities, an emerging shift recognizes transgender students as active contributors to campus life. Differences by race, gender identity, student status, and disability underscore the necessity of intersectional approaches. This review advances a reframing of transgender students not as victims of oppression alone but as actors who cultivate relational, navigational, and transformative capacities within unequal institutional conditions. Centering assets is both ethically imperative and strategically necessary to support transgender students thriving in the current reactionary climate.