Abstract
This paper examines the consequences of changes in Hispanic college enrollment after affirmative action was banned and replaced by an admission guarantee for students who graduate in the top 10% of their high school class. We use administrative data on applicants, admittees, and enrollees from the two most selective public institutions and Texas Education Agency data about high schools to evaluate whether and how application, admission, and enrollment rates changed under the three admission regimes. Despite popular claims that the top 10% law has restored diversity to Texas’s public flagships, our analyses that account for secular changes in the size of graduation cohorts show that Hispanics are more disadvantaged relative to whites under the top 10% admission regime at both University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University. Simulations of Hispanics’ gains and losses at each stage of the college pipeline reveal that affirmative action is the most efficient policy to diversify college campuses, even in highly segregated states like Texas.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Hopwood v Texas, 78 F.3d 932 (5th Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 518 U.S. 1033 (1996).
UT-Dallas and Texas Tech University also reported sharp declines in the number of minority first time freshmen, as did professional schools.
Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 328 (2003).
Because the Hopwood decision was delivered on March 18, 1996, and applications for the entering class of the fall of 1996 were mostly adjudicated, the Hopwood decision took effect for the entering class of the fall of 1997.
Although Grutter permits narrowly tailored consideration of race in college admissions, the top 10% law explicitly required a full year advance notice before announced changes in admission criteria could take effect. Therefore, no Texas universities could restore affirmative action until fall 2005 admissions.
Our data do not span the post-Grutter period, therefore we can not evaluate changes under the fourth regime that permits affirmative action with the percent plan.
TEA reports higher graduation rates (circa 84%), but Swanson’s Cumulative Promotion Index generates more accurate cohort-estimates. Specifically, the 67% graduation rate indicates that only 67 of every 100 9th grade students will graduate 4 years later.
Administrative data available to us for UT extend through 2003 and for TAMU through 2002. See http://www.texastop10.princeton.edu for further details.
We used publicly available data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to determine which high schools to exclude from the analysis.
The weight used is the product of two separate weights. The first weight accounts for the size of the graduating class by dividing the total number of graduates by 150, which is the average size of graduating classes for the 942 high schools in the sample. Thus, a school with a graduating class size of 600 students will count double that of one with 300 graduates. The second weight accounts for the group specific share of the graduating class.
For parsimony we omit blacks, Asians, and others.
Tabulations available from authors.
In a recent communication to alumni (June, 2008), President Powers noted that in 2006, Texas spent 3.35% of GDP on public education, including post-secondary institutions, compared with 4.24% by California, 4.49% by Michigan, and 4.05 by North Carolina.
References
Alon, S., & Tienda, M. (2007). Diversity, opportunity and the shifting meritocracy in higher education. American Sociological Review, 72, 487–511.
Barr, R. (2002). Top 10 percent policy: Higher education diversity after Hopwood. Interim News, No. 77–79. Austin, TX: Texas House of Representatives, House Research Organization.
Bowen, W. G., & Bok, D. (1998). The shape of the river: Long-term consequences of considering race in college and university admissions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Brown, S. K., & Hirschman, C. (2006). The end of affirmative action in Washington state and its impact on the transition from high school to college. Sociology of Education, 79, 106–130.
Card, D., & Krueger, A. B. (2005). Would the elimination of affirmative action affect highly qualified minority applicants? Evidence from California and Texas. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 58, 416–434.
Domina, T. (2007). Higher education policy as secondary school reform: Texas public high schools after “Hopwood”. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 29, 200–217.
Haurwitz, R. K. M. (2008). Judge considers legality of UT admissions policy: Lawsuit seeks to bar university’s consideration of race, ethnicity. Austin American-Statesman (Texas) Metro:B1.
Holley, D., & Spencer, D. (1999). The Texas ten percent plan. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 34, 245–278.
Koffman, D., & Tienda, M. (2008). Missing in application: The Texas top 10% law and campus socioeconomic diversity. Working Paper, Texas Higher Education Opportunity Project. http://theop.princeton.edu/reports/wp/ApplicantSocialClass.pdf.
Long, M., & Tienda, M. (2008). Winners and losers: Changes in Texas University admissions post-Hopwood. Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 30, 255–280.
Long, M., & Tienda, M. (2010). Changes in Texas universities’ applicant pools after the Hopwood decision. Social Science Research, 39, 48–66.
Montejano, D. (2001). Access to the University of Texas at Austin and the ten percent plan: A three-year Assessment (Admissions Brief). Austin: University of Texas at Austin, Office of Admissions Research. http://www.utexas.edu/student/admissions/research/montejanopaper.html.
Niu, S. X., & Tienda, M. (2010). Minority student academic performance under the uniform admission law: Lessons from the University of Texas at Austin. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 32(1), 44–69.
Schmidt, P. (2008). New twists mark the debate over Texas’ top 10-percent plan. The Chronicle of Higher Education Government and Politics:20.
Strayhorn, C. K. (2005). The impact of the state higher education system on the Texas economy. Austin, TX: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Retrieved June 28, 2008, http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/highered05.
Swanson, C. B. (2006). High school graduation in Texas. Bethesda, MD: Educational Projects in Education Research Center. http://www.edweek.org/media/texas_eperc.pdf.
Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board [THECB]. (2003). Participation and success forecast, 2003–2015: Texas institutions of higher education. Austin: Division of Planning and Information Resources.
Tienda, M. (2006). Harnessing diversity in higher education: Lessons from Texas. In Maureen. Devlin (Ed.), Ford policy forum, 2006: Exploring the economics of higher education (pp. 7–14). Washington, D.C: NACUBO and the Forum for the Future of Higher Education.
Tienda, M., & Niu, S. X. (2006). Capitalizing on segregation, pretending neutrality: College admissions and the Texas top 10% law. American Law and Economics Review, 8, 312–346.
Tienda, M., & Sullivan, T. A. (2009). The promise and peril of the Texas uniform admission law. In M. Hall, M. Krislov, & D. L. Featherman (Eds.), The next twenty five years? Affirmative action and higher education in the United States and South Africa. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education [WICHE]. (2008). Knocking at the college door: Projections of high school graduates by state, income, and race/ethnicity, 1992 to 2022. Boulder, CO: Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.
Wilgoren, J. (1999). New law in Texas preserves racial mix in state’s colleges. The New York Times, November 19. A:1.
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by grants from the Ford, Mellon, Hewlett, and Spencer Foundations and NSF (GRANT # SES-0350990). We gratefully acknowledge institutional support from the Office of Population Research (NICHD Grant # R24 H0047879) and programming assistance from Dawn Koffman.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Harris, A.L., Tienda, M. Hispanics in Higher Education and the Texas Top 10% Law. Race Soc Probl 4, 57–67 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-012-9065-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-012-9065-7