IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/anname/v627y2010i1p82-105.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Policy Transparency and College Enrollment: Did the Texas Top Ten Percent Law Broaden Access to the Public Flagships?

Author

Listed:
  • Mark C. Long

    (Daniel Evans School at the University of Washington)

  • Victor Saenz

    (Department of Educational Administration at the University of Texas at Austin)

  • Marta Tienda

    (Princeton University)

Abstract

By guaranteeing college admission to all students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school class, Texas H.B. 588 replaced an opaque de facto practice of admitting nearly all top 10 percent graduates with a transparent de jure policy that required public institutions to admit all applicants eligible for the guarantee. The new admission regime sent a clear message to students attending high schools that previously sent few students to the Texas flagships. Using 18 years of administrative data to examine sending patterns, we find a sizeable decrease in the concentration of flagship enrollees originating from select feeder schools and growing shares of enrollees originating from high schools located in rural areas, small towns, and midsize cities, as well as from schools with concentrations of poor and minority students. For new sending schools, we find substantial year-to-year persistence in sending behavior, which increased after the top 10 percent policy was implemented.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark C. Long & Victor Saenz & Marta Tienda, 2010. "Policy Transparency and College Enrollment: Did the Texas Top Ten Percent Law Broaden Access to the Public Flagships?," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 627(1), pages 82-105, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:627:y:2010:i:1:p:82-105
    DOI: 10.1177/0002716209348741
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716209348741
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0002716209348741?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cynthia Bansak & Steven Raphael, 2007. "The effects of state policy design features on take-up and crowd-out rates for the state children's health insurance program," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(1), pages 149-175.
    2. Janet Currie, 2004. "The Take Up of Social Benefits," NBER Working Papers 10488, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Wojciech Kopczuk, 2011. "Transfer Program Complexity and the Take-Up of Social Benefits," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 54-90, February.
    4. Niu, Sunny Xinchun & Tienda, Marta & Cortes, Kalena, 2006. "College selectivity and the Texas top 10% law," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 259-272, June.
    5. Anna Aizer, 2007. "Public Health Insurance, Program Take-Up, and Child Health," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(3), pages 400-415, August.
    6. Marta Tienda & Sunny Xinchun Niu, 2006. "Flagships, Feeders, and the Texas Top 10% Law: A Test of the “Brain Drain” Hypothesis," The Journal of Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 77(4), pages 712-739, July.
    7. Sunny Xinchun Niu & Teresa Sullivan & Marta Tienda, 2008. "Minority Talent Loss and the Texas Top 10 Percent Law," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 89(4), pages 831-845, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bleemer, Zachary, 2019. "DIVERSITY IN UNIVERSITY ADMISSIONS: Affirmative Action, Percent Plans, and Holistic Review," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt1kb1b4cq, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
    2. Klasik, Daniel & Cortes, Kalena E., 2022. "Uniform admissions, unequal access: Did the top 10% plan increase access to selective flagship institutions?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marieke Huysentruyt & Eva Lefevere, 2010. "Child Benefit Support and Method of Payment: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Belgium," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 163-184, May.
    2. Rozema, Kyle & Ziebarth, Nicolas R., 2015. "Behavioral Responses to Taxation: Cigarette Taxes and Food Stamp Take-Up," IZA Discussion Papers 8907, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Wojciech Kopczuk, 2011. "Transfer Program Complexity and the Take-Up of Social Benefits," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 54-90, February.
    4. Liu, Hong & Sun, Qi & Zhao, Zhong, 2014. "Social learning and health insurance enrollment: Evidence from China's New Cooperative Medical Scheme," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 84-102.
    5. Ha Trong Nguyen & Huong Thu Le & Luke B Connelly, 2021. "Who's declining the “free lunch”? New evidence from the uptake of public child dental benefits," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 270-288, February.
    6. Julie Janssens & Tim Goedemé & Koen Ponnet, 2021. "The Claiming Costs Scale: A new instrument for measuring the costs potential beneficiaries face when claiming social benefits," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(8), pages 1-17, August.
    7. Manasi Deshpande & Yue Li, 2019. "Who Is Screened Out? Application Costs and the Targeting of Disability Programs," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 213-248, November.
    8. repec:pri:indrel:dsp01bc386j227 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Krueger, Alan B. & Kuziemko, Ilyana, 2013. "The demand for health insurance among uninsured Americans: Results of a survey experiment and implications for policy," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 780-793.
    10. James Marton & Angela Snyder & Mei Zhou, 2016. "Enhanced Citizenship Verification And Children'S Medicaid Coverage," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(3), pages 1670-1683, July.
    11. Buchmueller Thomas C & Lo Sasso Anthony T & Wong Kathleen N, 2008. "How Did SCHIP Affect the Insurance Coverage of Immigrant Children?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 8(2), pages 1-25, January.
    12. Alari Paulus, 2016. "The antipoverty performance of universal and means-tested benefits with costly take-up," ImPRovE Working Papers 16/12, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    13. Karthik Muralidharan & Paul Niehaus & Sandip Sukhtankar, 2020. "Identity Verification Standards in Welfare Programs: Experimental Evidence from India," NBER Working Papers 26744, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Thomas Buchmueller & John C. Ham & Lara D. Shore-Sheppard, 2015. "The Medicaid Program," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, Volume 1, pages 21-136, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Krueger, Alan B. & Kuziemko, Ilyana, 2013. "The demand for health insurance among uninsured Americans: Results of a survey experiment and implications for policy," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 780-793.
    16. Tomer Blumkin & Tuomas Kosonen & Kaisa Kotakorpi, 2018. "Complexity and benefit take-up: Empirical evidence from the Finnish homecare allowance," Discussion Papers 123, Aboa Centre for Economics.
    17. Julie Janssens & Natascha Van Mechelen, 2017. "Who is to Blame? An Overview of the Factors Contributing to the Non-Take-Up of Social Rights," Working Papers 1708, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    18. Bronchetti, Erin Todd, 2014. "Public insurance expansions and the health of immigrant and native children," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 205-219.
    19. Olivier Bargain & Herwig Immervoll & Heikki Viitamäki, 2012. "No claim, no pain. Measuring the non-take-up of social assistance using register data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 10(3), pages 375-395, September.
    20. Andrews, Rodney J. & Ranchhod, Vimal & Sathy, Viji, 2010. "Estimating the responsiveness of college applications to the likelihood of acceptance and financial assistance: Evidence from Texas," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 104-115, February.
    21. Eric Furstenberg, 2010. "Academic Outcomes and Texas’s Top Ten Percent Law," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 627(1), pages 167-183, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:627:y:2010:i:1:p:82-105. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.