The Racial College Completion Gap: Evidence From Texas

ABSTRACT

This analysis focuses on the college completion gap between underrepresented minority students and White students, or the Hispanic -White and Black -White racial college completion gaps, given the unprecedented demographic growth of these populations in the United States as well as the nation's public K -12 schools and postsecondary institutions. Using a variance decomposition method, we find that precollege characteristics (a combination of individual and high school context factors) contribute upward of 61% of the total variance for both Hispanic and Black students as compared with their White student counterparts. That is, more than half of the completion gap is explained by precollege characteristics. Postsecondary factors explained approximately 35% of the total variance. Additional analyses accounting for attending Hispanic-Serving Institution or an Historically Black College or University are also provided. The data suggest that college completion and accountability analyses should be approached from beyond a postsecondary perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• College completion
• completion gap
• traditionally underrepresented minority students
• variance decomposition

Acknowledgments

The data used in this article include administrative records from the Texas Education Agency and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The conclusions of this research do not necessarily reflect the opinions or the official position of the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, or the State of Texas.

Funding

This work was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and The Civil Rights Project/Projecto Derechos Civiles at The University of California Los Angeles.

Notes

^1. For this analysis, we use the terms “Latino” and “Hispanic” interchangeably. We also use the terms Black and African American interchangeably.

^2. We define URM students in Texas as those who are of Hispanic, Black, and Native American origin, although our analyses focused on Black and Hispanic students in the URM category due to population sample number constraints.

^3. For work examining the growing heterogeneity within HSIs and HSI designation criteria, see Núñez and Bowers (2011) and Núñez, Sparks, and Hernandez (2011).

^4. There are no tribal colleges and universities in Texas. Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions (AANAPISIs) were not officially part of the Texas landscape during the sample years examined. For more information on AANAPISIs, see Teranishi (2014).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and The Civil Rights Project/Projecto Derechos Civiles at The University of California Los Angeles.