The Impacts of Select State-Level Policies on Increasing the Educational Attainment of Undocumented Immigrant Youth

Abstract

Undocumented children have a right to a public k-12 education in the United States, however there is no standard approach to higher education. About half of states allow undocumented immigrants to attend public colleges and universities at in-state rates of tuition (ISRT) and a subset of these also allow them access to state financial aid. This dissertation measures the impacts of these state-level policies that attempt to increase access to higher education for this group and studies the relationship between ISRT policies and college counseling of undocumented students at the high school level.The dissertation starts by measuring the impact of ISRT policies, financial aid policies, and DACA on a variety of educational and employment outcomes for undocumented immigrant youth. It uses Current Population Survey basic monthly data from July 1999 – December 2015. A difference-in-differences research design is operationalized through a standard linear regression two-way fixed-effects model. The findings include a 4-percentage point increase in college attendance and a 2-percentage point increase in college graduation due to the implementation of ISRT policies. The dissertation also finds that granting access to state financial aid can double the impact of the ISRT policy. DACA serves to decrease the college enrollment and increase the employment of undocumented immigrant youth. The dissertation then reacts to emerging literature in the field of econometrics that critiques the difference-in-differences research design operationalized through the standard linear regression two-way fixed-effects model when there are multiple groups that adopt the treatment at different times. It uses the American Community Survey from 2001-2019 and the Census 2000 1% sample to apply a newer quantitative method, the Calloway-Sant’Anna difference-in-differences estimator. Even with a new, more robust quantitative method ISRT policies increase the college enrollment of undocumented immigrants by, on average, 3 percentage points. They increase college graduation rates by, on average, 1 percentage point. However, there is a lot of heterogeneity present in the results that have large policy implications. This is explored in depth. Lastly, the dissertation uses the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 to perform a Latent Class Analysis that identifies three typologies of college counseling opportunity structures in U.S. high schools. It then uses regression analysis to explore the relationship between attending high school in a state with an ISRT policy and the rate that high school counselors and undocumented immigrant students speak about college in the ninth grade. States with an ISRT policy have a smaller percentage of high schools with counseling opportunity structures that encourage college going than states without an ISRT policy. Similarly, students who are undocumented are the least likely to attend schools with counseling opportunity structures that prioritize college. Even so, high school counselors and undocumented students in the ninth grade are more likely to speak about college than are high school counselors and documented or nonimmigrant ninth graders. However, this is only the case in states that have adopted an ISRT policy.