State College Admission Guarantees: A Study of the College Access Organizational Field

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Organizational Theory in Practice and Policy: Roundtable

Abstract

It is recognized that secondary and post-secondary educational organizations are linked within the field of college access as students from the former are sorted and selected and into the latter. Researchers, however, spend little time examining the variation of this organizational field. I use a nationally representative sample of U.S. high schools to examine the boundaries of the college access field by observing how the ecological (poverty) and policy (public college admission guarantee) environments of secondary schools is associated with academic climate of secondary schools and the flow of student resources from secondary to post-secondary educational organizations. I find evidence that policy environments have little association with school climate, but that both policy and poverty are associated with college applications.

Author

• Jacob Kepins, University of California - Irvine