Leveraging rich data on the universe of Texas high school graduates, we estimate how the relationship between geographic access to public two- and four-year postsecondary institutions and postsecondary outcomes varies across race-ethnicity and socioeconomic status. We find that students are sensitive to the distance they must travel to access…

The concern for increasing future student enrollment in a central Texas community college was examined to determine specific strategies to proactively address this problem of professional practice during the ongoing 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic and pandemic recurrence. The purpose of this research study was to consider the factors, as identified by…

For students who decide to enroll in college after high school graduation, there are numerous factors to consider when searching for potential matches and choosing from the available options. Ten recent high school graduates who participated in self-selected, ability-grouped, advanced academic courses in high school were interviewed at the end of…

As of 2015, eighteen states in the nation had enacted tuition equity laws granting resident tuition rates to qualifying undocumented students. The state of Texas was the pioneer of this movement, approving House Bill 1403 in July of 2001. The initiative came to be known as the 'Texas Dream Act' (TDA). It granted a large reduction in the cost of…

Access to higher education begins with a student's decision whether and where to apply to college. This paper examines racial and ethnic differences in college application behavior of high school graduates, using two recent graduation cohorts from Texas. We estimate racial and ethnic differences in the probability of applying to college,…

A growing body of literature is demonstrating that a number of students who are academically prepared for postsecondary fail to make the transition to college. The purpose of this study is to explore the relative influence of student and school level factors on three stages in students' college-going process: application, admission, and…

Hispanic high school graduates have lower college completion rates than academically similar white students. As Hispanic students have been theorized to be more constrained in the college search and selection process, one potential policy lever is to increase the set of colleges to which these students apply and attend. In this paper, we…

The Texas Ten Percent Plan (TTP) provides students in the top 10 percent of their high-school class with automatic admission to any public university in the state, including the two flagship schools, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M. Texas created the policy in 1997 after a federal appellate court ruled that the state's previous…

In 2006, TG (Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation) issued a report entitled "Ready, Willing and Unable: How Financial Barriers Obstruct Bachelor Degree Attainment in Texas." Drawing on a report by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, which projected the number of bachelor degrees lost nationally due to financial…