Diamonds or Diamonds in the Rough

Off-Campus Recruiting by Public Research Universities

Karina Salazar

University of Arizona

Ozan Jaquette

University of California, Los Angeles

Crystal Han

University of California, Los Angeles

ozanj.github.io/soc_of_ed_presentation

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Motivation

Policy discourse about access to public research universities

The problem: access to public research universities

• Historical mission of social mobility for meritorious state residents
• Concern about growing socioeconomic and racial inequality in access

Mainstream policy discourse about access: The 2014 White House "Access Summit"

• The White House (2014) review of causes of unequal college access
  • "achievement gap", "under-matching"; place responsibility on students, K-12 schools
  • affordability; declining state support leads to rising tuition prices
• The White House (2014) asks universities for Commitments to Action on College Opportunity
  • Universities pledge "action plans" (e.g., need-based financial aid, "outreach", holistic admission)

Problem with policy discourse: does not interrogate university enrollment priorities

• Applauds universities for commitment to access despite "deficiencies" of students and K-12 schools, despite declines in state funding
• Decades of research finds policy adoption a symbolic effort to appease stakeholders (e.g., Davis, 2005)

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Motivation

Analyze recruiting to understand university enrollment priorities

Alternative explanation for access inequality

• University enrollment priorities biased against poor students and/or communities of color

Why study university recruiting behavior

• Universities expend substantial resources identifying and recruiting prospects (Noel-Levitz, 2018)
• Internal resource allocation better indicator of organizational priorities than rhetoric, policies
• Knowing which student populations targeted by recruiting efforts indicates enrollment priorities

Research focus

• Analyze off-campus recruiting visits (e.g., visit to a local high school) by public research universities as a means of gaining insight about university enrollment priorities
• Research question
  • What are the similarities and differences in off-campus recruiting patterns across universities?
• Analytic focus
  • Income; race; academic achievement; in-state vs. out-of-state

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Literature review

Scholarship on recruiting

Evaluations of recruiting/outreach interventions (e.g., Dynarski, Libassi, Michelmore, Owen, 2018)

• But unclear whether universities substantively adopt "best practices" in less controlled settings

Audits of response to "inquiries" by admissions officers (e.g., Hanson, 2017; Thornhill, forthcoming)

• Identifies biases of individual admissions officers

Off-campus recruiting visits: identify prospects, connect with proespects already targeted by mail/email

• Scholarship analyzing college perspective (Stevens, 2007)
  • Important for relationships with prospects, counselors at "feeder" schools
• Market research (Noel-Levitz, 2018)
  • Second highest source of "inquiries" (after student list purchases)
  • Third highest source of enrollees (after stealth applicantsm on-campus visits)
• Scholarship analyzing perspective of high school students (Holland, 2019)
  • Which universities visit affects student decisions; especially first-gen, students of color

Research gap: we don't know which universities visit which schools, communities

• If poor students, communities of color not receiving visits, "under-matching" may be due to under-recruiting rather than lack of guidance

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Theoretical framework

Enrollment priorities and recruiting behavior

Theoretical motivation for studying recruiting

• Contingency theory (Thompson, 1967)
  • Technical level: produce outputs (e.g., teachers at school, admissions officers in EM office)
  • Managerial level: procure inputs; direct technical level and "buffer" from external environment
• "New" institutional theory (Meyer and Rowan, 1977)
  • Publicly adopt goals demanded by environment
  • Technical level cannot pursue all goals
    • Substantively adopt some goals (technical level)
    • Symbolically adopt others (policies, rhetoric)

"Iron triangle" of enrollment management (EM)

• Three broad enrollment goals: access, academic profile, revenue
  • Scarce resources; depending on priorities, some goals receive more resources than others
• Enrollment priorities cannot be discerned by policies, rhetoric (e.g., The White House, 2014)
• Off-campus recruiting is allocation of resources from technical level
  • Knowing which populations targeted by recruiting interventions indicate enrollment priorities

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Theoretical framework

Expectations about similarities and differences in recruiting behavior

Resource dependence theory (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978)

• Orgs require stable flow of resources from external environment to survive/thrive
• Sensitive to demands from providers of important resources that cannot be obtained elsewhere
• Org strategies when a resouce becomes uncertain/declines or demands become onerous
  • e.g., compliance, avoidance, cooptation, resource diversification

Resources public research universities value

• financial resources (state funding, tuition, research, donations); steady flow of students; prestige, etc.

Resource diversification in response to prolonged decline in important resources

• Universities with weak state funding
  • Prioritize students that generate tuition revenue
  • More visits to affluent out-of-state, affluent in-state
• Universities with small/declining "college age" population
  • More out-of-state visits

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Research methods

Defining events

"Off-campus recruiting events" defined as off-campus events hosted by paid staff/consultants focused on soliciting applications

• Event type
  • Include: college fairs, high school visits, community college visits, counselor events
  • Exclude: admitted or committed student events, interviews
• Event host
  • Include: paid admissions staff or consultants (e.g. regional recruiters)
  • Exclude: alumni, student volunteers
• Event location
  • Any off-campus location
  • e.g., high school, community college, hotel, convention center, cafe, etc.

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Research methods

Data collection, data processing, data quality

Data collection

• University website checked four times per year by two staff for URLs with recruiting events
• Web-scraping scripts run once per week

Data processing

• "Parsing": transform HTML text into tabular data
• "Geocoding": use Google Maps API to obtain detailed location data based on limited data
• Merge recruiting data to secondary data (e.g., schools, communities)

Data quality (are these data any good?)

• Concern 1: are scraped events properly classified and merged to secondary data?
  • Solution: manually check each scraped event
• Concern 2: are all events posted on admissions website?
  • Solution: issue public records requests for all off-campus recruiting events
    • Received data from 7 of 15 universities
    • Main analyses use public records data when available
    • Substantive results insensitive to scraped vs. public records data

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Research methods

Research design and analyses

Quantitative mulitple case study research design (Korzilius, 2010)

• Quantitative data collection and quantitative analyses
• Analyze each case separately, rather than pooling across cases as in large-N, random sample design

Data analysis (Eisenhardt, 1989; Pratt, Rockmann, and Kaufmann, 2006)

• "Within-case" analyses of recruiting patterns
  • broad focus on income, race, achievement, in-state vs. out-of-state
  • Situate within local context; "deep dive" of in-state, out-of-state, and overall patterns
    • Simple descriptive statistics (e.g., counts), static visualizations, interactive maps
  • identify first-order empirical themes
• "Cross-case" analyses
  • Abstract/consolidate first-order findings into broader empirical themes
  • Acrsoss-case descriptive analyses
    • Simple descriptive statistics
    • Controlling for "rational" reasons for visit (e.g., enrollment size, achievement, distance)

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Cross-university results

Number of events by type and in-state, out-of-state

Deep-dive results

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Cross-university results, out-of-state visits

Descriptive statistics for public high school visits

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Cross-university results, out-of-state visits

Probability of out-of-state public high school receiving a visit

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Cross-university results, out-of-state visits

Descriptive statistics for private high school visits

Deep-dive results

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Cross-university results, out-of-state visits

Small multiple map of recruiting visits

Deep-dive results

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Cross-university results, in-state visits

Descriptive statistics for public high school visits

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Cross-university results, in-state visits

Regression: probability of in-state public high school receiving a visit

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Cross-university results, in-state visits

Descriptive statistics for community college visits

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Summary

Summary of results

Out of State Recruiting

• Majority of visits are out-of-state (exceptions: NC State, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley)
• Big income bias; visits concentrated in highly affluent communities, in metropolitan areas
• Big racial bias; less likely to visit schools with predominantly Black/Hispanic/Native students
• Disproportionate number of visits to private high schools

In-State Recruiting

• Variation in coverage of public high schools (e.g., Nebraska=88%; Alabama=33%), community colleges
• Visits largely driven by either achievement or enrollment size
• Income bias in most cases (but less than out-of-state) even after controlling for "rational" reasons
  • Exceptions: NC State, UC Irvine
• Bias against schools with predominantly Black/Hispanic/Native in some cases (e.g., U. Alabama)

Overall similarities and differences

• For most cases, limited in-state recruiting and expansive out-of-state recruiting in big metro areas
  • But differences in which metro areas, regions of country visited
• Universities with higher state funding: fewer out-of-state visits; better, equitable coverage of in-state

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Discussion

Next steps, implications, future research

Next steps for this paper

• Complete cross-case holistic analysis of recruiting; develop recruiting "types"

Implications

• Results suggest dramatic income bias in enrollment priorities of public research universities
  • Evidence of racial bias (especially in out-of-state recruiting), but patterns more nuanced
• Policy discourse should focus on enrollment priorities, rather than student, K-12 deficiencies
  • "Under-matching" may be a function of under-recruiting

Future research

• Manuscript that focuses on racial biases in off-campus recruiting visits
  • Universities prioritizing middle-class students of color and "privileged poor" (Jack, 2016) enrolled in high-resource schools, but ignoring traditional public schools that are majority-minority?
• Collect/analyze data on other means used to identify and target prospects
  • Characteristics universities prioritize when purchasing "prospect lists" from College Board/ACT?
  • Experimental audits of university responses to "inquiries" with different characteristics

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Acknowledgments

This research was made possible by funding from the following sources:

• National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation (Postdoctoral Fellowship)
• American Educational Research Association (Dissertation Grant)
• UCLA Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (Faculty Career Development Award)
• Joyce Foundation (Research Grant)

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