 High school grades, admissions policies, and the gender gap in college enrollmentDylan Conger Economics of Education Review, 2015, vol. 46, issue C, 144-147 Abstract: The female advantage in college enrollment and completion has generated concern among university officials and sparked debate about gender-conscious college admissions. There are a number of explanations for this increasing gender imbalance on college campuses. This paper focuses on the role played by admissions policies that base decisions solely on applicants’ high school grades. Given that females earn higher grades than males, such policies can contribute to growing female shares in admissions. To exemplify this trend, I use publicly-available data from Texas to show that the Texas Top 10% plan, which guarantees public university admission to students who graduate in the top decile of their high school class, led to an increase in the female share of accepted students. The increase was particularly large among black students, where the female share of admitted students was already highest among the major racial/ethnic groups. Keywords: Higher education; Gender (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:46:y:2015:i:c:p:144-147 DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2015.03.003 Access Statistics for this article Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier |
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