Minority Higher Education Pipeline: Consequences of Changes in College Admissions Policy in Texas

The authors uses administrative data for the two most selective Texas public institutions to examine the application, admission, and enrollment consequences of rescinding affirmative action and implementing the top 10 percent admission regime. The authors simulate the gains and losses associated with each policy regime and those from assigning minorities the corresponding rates for white students. Challenging popular claims that the Top Ten Percent Law restored diversification of Texas’s public flagships, analyses that consider both changes in the size of high school graduation cohorts and institutional carrying capacity show that the uniform admission regime did not restore Hispanic and black representation at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M even after four years. Simulations of gains and losses for Hispanics and blacks at each stage of the college pipeline across admission regimes confirm that affirmative action is the most efficient policy to diversify college campuses, even in highly segregated states like Texas.