Does Striving for Prestige Impede Access for Underrepresented Minorities to Public Regional Comprehensive Universities?

• In Event: Recasting the Study of Legitimacy, Equity, and Resilience Through Regional Comprehensive Universities

Abstract

Underrepresented minority (URM) students have gained increasing access to postsecondary education over time, but among four-year institutions, they face longstanding barriers to selective private colleges and public flagships (Posselt et al., 2012). The URM students who enroll in the four-year sector disproportionately attend access-oriented public RCUs (Fryar, 2015). Neo-institutional theory suggests a field of striving influences public RCUs to model highly selective, research-intensive, and wealthy research universities for legitimacy and prestige (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; O’Meara, 2007). We posit that, based on emerging lines of neo-institutional thought (Warshaw et al., 2019), public RCUs face conflicting imperatives from two fields: an origin one of access and equity and another of striving. These considerations inform our research question: which organizational characteristics of striving are associated with enrolling URM undergraduates at RCUs? In turn, our study may contribute to broader understandings of the relationship between striving and social stratification.

As competition for resources and prestige in higher education has increased, RCUs have been considered especially susceptible to striving (Tuchman, 2009). Researchers and analysts typically focus on whether a particular striving-related admissions or financial-aid initiative influences student diversity and equity, precluding a broader perspective on the array of initiatives throughout an institution that enhances or constrains educational opportunity. To offer an integrative framework, we develop propositions in the operational domains of admissions selectivity, student demography, institutional finances and resources, and organizational context. In this paper, we examine the relationship between these operational domains and enrollment share of undergraduate URM students at RCUs over the last decade. Given the longitudinal nature of this analysis, we estimated fixed-effects models to examine the relationship between each of our independent variables and racial diversity over time.

Our panel analyses, based on IPEDS data from 2005-06 to 2016-17, suggest that, all else equal, the more selective public RCUs enrolled fewer URM students over time than their peers. For example, every 100-point increase in the 75th percentile score for SAT was associated with a 1.9% decrease in the percentage of URM undergraduate enrollment. In contrast, these institutions also appeared to use financial levers to increase URM enrollment, as increases in tuition price (in-state) were associated with dramatic increases in URM enrollment (12% increase in URM enrollment for every logged unit increase in tuition price). There were also organizational context-based influences associated with URM enrollment. For example, an increase in state URM population rates, and the enactment of state-level affirmative action bans, were each associated with increases in URM enrollment.

As the findings and theoretical perspective of this analysis suggests, the average public RCU remained true to access-serving orientations associated with a field of equity. Among the more selective and better-resourced public RCUs, which enrolled fewer URM students over time, the marginal effects in the analysis were rather moderate. Prior research and theory may thus overestimate the extent to which public RCUs strive for prestige to the detriment of access and equity. We discuss implications for managing conflicting imperatives from two fields and for public policy that rewards access and equity.

Authors

• Matt DeMonbrun, Southern Methodist University

• Jarrett B. Warshaw, Florida Atlantic University

• Jon McNaughtan, Texas Tech University