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Labor Market Returns for Graduates of Hispanic-Serving Institutions

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Abstract

Latinos have become the largest minority group in American postsecondary education, a majority of whom attend two- or four-year Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs). However, little is known about labor market outcomes as result of attending these institutions. Using a unique student-level administrative database in Texas, and accounting for college selectivity, we examine whether attending an HSI influences labor market outcomes ten years after high school graduation for Latino students in Texas. We find no difference in the earnings of Hispanic graduates from HSIs and non-HSIs. This analysis represents one of the first to examine the labor market outcomes for Latino students in this sector of education accounting for critical factors that include a student’s high school and community context.

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Notes

  1. This study utilized the same definitional construction of the term “Hispanic” as is used by the 2010 U.S. Census. That is, an individual’s self-identification of Hispanic origin, regardless of race, triggers their inclusion in this group. While we use the terms “Latino” and “Hispanic” interchangeably, Hispanic is primarily used to be consistent with this nomenclature present in U.S. policy documentation and the federal higher education funding program serving this population: Hispanic-Serving Institutions.

  2. Reducing a university’s decision to admit or deny students to both observable—standardized test scores and GPA—and unobservable variables, Dale and Krueger (2002) intuitively define selective institutions as those with higher thresholds necessary for admissions acceptance. Thus, the present study operationalized “selective flagship public universities” as the premier institutions of their respective university systems, such as the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University at College Station, which correspondingly have the lowest, and therefore most selective, acceptance rates in the state of Texas.

  3. UT-Tyler is not included in the 1997 cohort, as this institution at that time only enrolled upper-division (junior and senior) students; freshmen were first admitted to UT-Tyler in 1998. UT-Brownsville is not included in the 1997 and 2000 cohort, as the database at that time did not record baccalaureate degree graduates from this institution.

  4. UT-Permian Basin is not flagged as an HSI as it did not meet the 25% threshold in 1997. Furthermore, we do not include Brazosport College, Midland College, or South Texas College as HSIs; although these institutions meet the 25% threshold, they primarily award associate degrees.

  5. Selectivity rankings come from Barron’s 1997 index and are time-invariant in cohort analyses.

  6. For a map of the Texas economic regions, see https://texaspolitics.utexas.edu/archive/html/pec/features/0302_02/regmap.html.

  7. For a more detailed description of the identification of English learners in Texas at the point of classification, see Flores et al. (2012).

  8. Unfortunately, our data do not include financial aid information for respondents so we are not able to measure issues of affordability. The analysis focuses instead on the level of economic disadvantage.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the University of Pennsylvania Center for Minority Serving Institutions, the Educational Testing Service, the University of Texas at Dallas Education Research Center, and New York University for their assistance and support of this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Florida State University College of Education, 1205D Stone Building, 1114 W. Call Street, Tallahassee, FL, 32306-4450, USA

    Toby J. Park

  2. New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, 82 Washington Square East, 7th Floor, New York, NY, 10003-6674, USA

    Stella M. Flores

  3. Vanderbilt University Peabody College, 230 Appleton Place, #414, Nashville, TN, 37203-5721, USA

    Christopher J. Ryan Jr.

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Correspondence to Toby J. Park.

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The data for this study include restricted-use administrative records from the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and the Texas Workforce Commission. The conclusions of this research do not necessarily reflect the opinions or official position of the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the Texas Workforce Commission, or the state of Texas.

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Park, T.J., Flores, S.M. & Ryan, C.J. Labor Market Returns for Graduates of Hispanic-Serving Institutions. Res High Educ 59, 29–53 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-017-9457-z

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