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A Quest for Equity? Measuring the Effect of QuestBridge on Economic Diversity at Selective Institutions

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Abstract

In response to growing income stratification in higher education, President Obama convened a White House Summit in 2014 where over 100 selective institutions committed to increasing the number of low-income students on their campus. One way colleges proposed to do so is through partnerships with college access organizations like QuestBridge, a nonprofit organization that aims to increase the percentage of low-income students at elite universities. While institutions purport that QuestBridge improved socioeconomic diversity, empirical research has not confirmed these claims. In this study, we estimate the effect of QuestBridge on overall access of Pell eligible students at partner institutions using quasi-experimental methods. We find no increase in the economic diversity of colleges after establishing a partnership with QuestBridge, except for colleges simultaneously partnering with QuestBridge and enacting no-loan financial aid policies. We also consider whether participation in QuestBridge increases institutional status through larger application volumes and increased selectivity, and discuss implications for research and practice in the area of stratification.

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Notes

  1. Because of the timing of IPEDS data collection, several variables are lagged for the model of application volume. Lagged variables are identified in Table 4.

  2. We indirectly test the parallel trends assumption graphically and by regressing the dependent variables on (1) an indicator variable for eventual QuestBridge partners, (2) a trend variable, and (3) an interaction of the indicator and trend variables. A significant coefficient on the interacted term would suggest a violation of the parallelism assumption. Results from this analyses (available by request) show that the interaction term is statistically insignificant for all dependent variables, and the point estimate is essentially zero.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Prof. Peter Bahr, Joe Howard, Prof. Stephen DesJardins, Prof. Michael Bastedo, and attendees at the 2015 GSCO-BET Graduate Student Conference and 2015 Association for the Study of Higher Education Conference for valuable comments and feedback. All remaining errors are our own. We share equally in authorship; names are listed alphabetically.

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  1. Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, University of Michigan, 610 East University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Fernando Furquim & Kristen M. Glasener

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  1. Fernando Furquim
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Correspondence to Fernando Furquim.

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Furquim, F., Glasener, K.M. A Quest for Equity? Measuring the Effect of QuestBridge on Economic Diversity at Selective Institutions. Res High Educ 58, 646–671 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-016-9443-x

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