Hispanic students may have been kept away from Texas' public research universities after the Legislature allowed state colleges to set their own tuition prices, according to a study published this month in The Annals, a journal of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
The study comes as Texas officials appear hard-pressed to meet 15-year enrollment targets for Hispanic students. The findings also touch on broader issues in Texas and among those seeking to encourage Latino enrollment in colleges nationally.
The report, by two Vanderbilt University scholars, Stella Flores and Justin Shepherd, examined Texas tuition policy after the Legislature in 2003 deregulated college prices. Before then, state lawmakers set tuition themselves and generally kept the rates the same across the state. The deregulation policy put university boards in charge of tuition and set few limits on the amount a college could charge.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/09/11/study-suggests-texass-tuition-policies-suppressed-hispanic-enrollment-research