Recruiting and Supporting Low-Income, High-Achieving Students at Flagship Universities

Rodney J. Andrews, Scott Imberman and Michael Lovenheim

No 22260, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study two interventions in Texas that were designed to overcome multiple hurdles faced by low-income, high-ability college students. The Longhorn Opportunity Scholars (LOS) and Century Scholars (CS) programs recruited at specified low-income high schools, provided additional financial aid, and enhanced support services once enrolled in college if students attended University of Texas - Austin or Texas A&M - College Station, respectively. These flagship institutions are widely regarded as the top public universities in Texas. Using administrative data that links K-12, postsecondary, and earnings records for Texas public college students, we find via difference-in-differences estimates that the LOS program had a large, positive effect on high-achievers: attendance at UT-Austin increased by 2.2 percentage points (81%), and the likelihood of graduating from UT-Austin increased by 1.7 percentage points (87%). Twelve or more years post-high school, earnings of those exposed to LOS rose by 4.0%. These results entirely come from women, who saw enrollment at UT-Austin increase by 4.0 percentage points, graduation from UT-Austin increase by 2.6 percentage points and earnings increase by 6.1%. We find no evidence that the CS program affected any postsecondary or labor market outcomes. These results indicate that targeted recruitment combined with adequate supports and financial aid can substantially increase enrollment of low-income students in higher quality colleges and improve labor market outcomes. However, the differences in the LOS and CS program effects highlight the importance of understanding how to design these programs to maximize their impact on students.

JEL-codes: H75 I23 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-lma
Note: ED LS PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published as Rodney J. Andrews & Scott A. Imberman & Michael F. Lovenheim, 2019. "Recruiting and supporting low-income, high-achieving students at flagship universities," Economics of Education Review, .

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22260.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Recruiting and supporting low-income, high-achieving students at flagship universities (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22260

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22260

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().