Mariana Alfonso

Comparing the Educational Attainment of Community College Transfer Students and Four-Year College Rising Juniors Using Propensity Score Matching Methods

The main objective of this study is to test whether junior-level four-year college students who initially attended a community college have similar educational outcomes as college juniors who only attended a four-year college. The results suggest that there are no differences in the outcomes of community college transfers and rising juniors.

Educational Outcomes of Postsecondary Occupational Students

This Brief discusses a research study that was conducted to determine the rates of degree completion of community college occupational students compared with other types of postsecondary students, and to identify factors that might explain those differences. Much of the existing literature on college persistence and completion is focused on baccalaureate students and pays little attention to students in community colleges, and even fewer studies consider differences by students’ program of study. Therefore, it is important to investigate whether students in occupational programs in community colleges persist in postsecondary education and attain degrees at similar rates as their academic and baccalaureate peers. Community college students, as defined here, are those taking for-credit courses at a two-year or less than two-year institution, or at a four-year institution, and who are pursuing a certificate or associate degree, or seeking no degree. Thus, community college student is a descriptive term independent of the type of institution the student is attending; rather, the designation is based on the student’s type of degree program. While we include some students at four-year institutions because of their stated degree objective, nearly 90 percent of all community college students fitting this definition attend two-year or less than two-year institutions, with more than threequarters attending public two-year institutions. Occupational students constitute a group within the community college student population whose self-reported major is in one of the following vocational fields of study: agricultural business and production, agricultural sciences, business, communication technologies, computer and information science, construction, engineering, engineering technologies, health professions, home economics, mechanics and repair, personal services, precision production, protective services, science technologies, or transportation. Academic students also comprise a group of community college students. Their self-reported major is in an academic field of study (humanities, mathematics, science, or social science). Baccalaureate students are those taking for-credit courses toward a bachelor’s degree at a four-year institution.

Minority Enrollments at Public Universities of Diverse Selectivity Levels Under Different Admission Regimes: The Case of Texas

This study describes how minority enrollment probabilities respond to changes in admission policies from affirmative-action to merit-only programs and then to percentage plans when the demographic composition of the potential pool of applicants is also shifting. It takes advantage of admission policy changes that occurred in the state of Texas with the Hopwood and HB588 decisions and of a unique administrative dataset that includes applications, admissions, and enrollments for three public universities of different selectivity levels. The findings suggest that the elimination of affirmative action and the introduction of the Top 10% plan had differential effects on minority enrollment probabilities as well as on application behavior depending on the selectivity level of the postsecondary institution. In particular, Hopwood is related to shifts in minority enrollments from selective institutions to less selective ones as the cascading hypothesis predicts. And although the Top 10% plan seems to have helped increased minority enrollment probabilities at the selective college as the upgrading hypothesis predicts, once the increases in minority shares among high-school graduates are taken into account, we find that the Top 10% plan can no longer be related to improvements in minority representation at selective universities.