The Wealth and Color of Off-Campus Recruiting by Public Research Universities
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation builds a research agenda that explores how off-campus recruiting visits by public research universities may undermine access for underserved student populations. Mainstream educational explanations for racial and socioeconomic access inequality place the onus on students, families, and K-12 schools. At the same time, policy discourse on higher education access largely ignores how the enrollment management behaviors of universities also impacts access. An alternative explanation for socioeconomic and racial access inequality is that university enrollment priorities are biased against low-income students and Students of Color. Universities spend considerable resources identifying prospective students and traveling across the country to solicit admission applications from these students (Hossler & Bontrager, 2014; Stevens, 2007). Knowing which student populations are targeted by university recruiting efforts can yield credible indicators of university enrollment priorities. The two empirical studies in this dissertation analyze off-campus recruiting visits by public research universities. Recruiting visits were collected from “web-scraping” travel schedules from admissions websites and from issuing public records requests. These recruiting data are then merged to secondary data on the characteristics of high schools and communities. The first empirical study in Chapter 3 analyzes similarities and differences in off-campus recruiting patterns across six public research universities using simple descriptive statistics, linear probability models, and geospatial visualizations. The study draws on resource dependence theory (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978) and academic capitalism (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004) to develop expectations about university recruiting behavior and whether patterns are linked to unfavorable state funding environments. Findings for Chapter 3 suggest that most universities in the study make many more out- of-state r…
abstract: This dissertation builds a research agenda that explores how off-campus recruiting visits by public research universities may undermine access for underserved student populations. Mainstream educational explanations for racial and socioeconomic access inequality place the onus on students, families, and K-12 schools. At the same time, policy discourse on higher education access largely ignores how the enrollment management behaviors of universities also impacts access. An alternative explanation for socioeconomic and racial access inequality is that university enrollment priorities are biased against low-income students and Students of Color. Universities spend considerable resources identifying prospective students and traveling across the country to solicit admission applications from these students (Hossler & Bontrager, 2014; Stevens, 2007). Knowing which student populations are targeted by university recruiting efforts can yield credible indicators of university enrollment priorities. The two empirical studies in this dissertation analyze off-campus recruiting visits by public research universities. Recruiting visits were collected from “web-scraping” travel schedules from admissions websites and from issuing public records requests. These recruiting data are then merged to secondary data on the characteristics of high schools and communities. The first empirical study in Chapter 3 analyzes similarities and differences in off-campus recruiting patterns across six public research universities using simple descriptive statistics, linear probability models, and geospatial visualizations. The study draws on resource dependence theory (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978) and academic capitalism (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004) to develop expectations about university recruiting behavior and whether patterns are linked to unfavorable state funding environments. Findings for Chapter 3 suggest that most universities in the study make many more out- of-state r…
author: Salazar, Karina Gracia
language: en
date published: 2019
date modified: 2026-07-24T00:56:34Z
provider: University of Arizona
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The University of Arizona.

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/634340