College Going in the Era of High Expectations: Racial/Ethnic Disparities in College Enrollment, 2006-2015

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  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 15: Pathways to College

Abstract

Adolescents with high educational expectations are more likely to apply to and enroll in college. Today, most adolescents report high educational expectations such that they expect to earn a BA or above; however, there remains important racial and ethnic heterogeneity in college enrollment patterns such that at every level of socioeconomic status minority youth have higher educational expectations than their white peers yet enroll in college at lower rates. Motivated by changing racial demographic patterns whereby the Hispanic population is rapidly increasing in size and in college enrollment, I use data from the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS) high school class of 2004 and the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS) class of 2013 to examine whether the relationship between adolescent educational expectations and enrollment in a four-year college within two years of graduation differs by race and ethnicity and whether this relationship has changed over time. Using best practices for interpreting nonlinear interaction effects, I find that the effect of high expectations on college enrollment is positive for all but is smaller for Hispanic students in both the ELS and HSLS cohorts. However, the gap in the average marginal effect of high educational expectations on college enrollment between Hispanic students and their peers has largely closed over the 10-year period.

Author

• Amber Dyan Villalobos, University of California-Merced