Follow the Money: Off-campus Recruiting by Selective Colleges and Universities

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early-Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

Policy discourse about racial and socioeconomic inequities in access to selective postsecondary institutions tends to focus on the deficiencies of families and K-12 schools (e.g., the “achievement gap,” “undermatching”). However, research has failed to investigate the extent to which the enrollment priorities and behaviors of selective institutions contribute to access inequality. Knowing which student populations are targeted by university recruiting efforts can yield credible indicators of enrollment priorities. Unfortunately, scholarship on recruiting is rare because recruiting data are difficult to obtain. This project analyzes off-campus recruiting visits (e.g., visit to a local high school) by 36 selective colleges and universities (12 private liberal arts colleges, 12 private research universities, and 12 public research universities). We collect data on off-campus recruiting events by ``scraping'' data from university admissions websites (e.g., web-pages advertising admissions representatives coming to a ``neighborhood near you''). We merge these recruiting data to secondary data on high schools, community colleges, and communities, enabling us to compare the socioeconomic characteristics of schools and communities that receive recruiting visits to the characteristics of schools and communities that do not receive visits.

Author

• Ozan Jaquette, University of California - Los Angeles