State's Ethnic Makeup and Decisions on Immigrants and College

[Harold F. Schiffman]

 http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/04/2006041202n.htm, Wednesday, April 12,
2006


A State's Ethnic Makeup May Matter More Than Its Political Leanings in Its
Decisions on Immigrants and College, Study Says
By DAVID GLENN


San Francisco

States whose populations include large proportions of racial minorities
appear to be more likely to adopt public policies that help minorities
enter and complete college, three scholars reported here on Tuesday at the
annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. While
that conclusion might seem obvious, the researchers' broader point is that
a state's ethnic demography, not its general political orientation, might
be the primary driver of its college-access policies.  Thus, Texas --
which by certain measures is among the country's most conservative states,
but whose population is 50 percent minority -- has several relatively
egalitarian programs that attempt to increase the number of Hispanic and
African-American residents who earn postsecondary certificates and
degrees.

The researchers -- Kevin J. Dougherty, an associate professor of higher
education at Teachers College of Columbia University, and H. Kenny
Nienhusser and Monica A. Reid, both doctoral candidates in higher
education at Teachers College -- recently completed a "policy audit" of
the community-college programs in five states: Florida, New Mexico, North
Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. Among those five states, only one -- Texas
-- has set explicit statewide targets for improving minority students'
success in college, Mr. Dougherty said. In 2000, the Texas Higher
Education Coordinating Board announced two formal goals: By 2015, the
board said, at least 16,000 African-Americans should earn postsecondary
certificates or degrees in Texas each year (the year-2000 level was
roughly 9,000), and at least 50,000 Hispanic Texans should earn
certificates or degrees each year (the year-2000 level was roughly
18,000).

The board called for a variety of institutional reforms to help attain
those goals, including new policies to help ease students' transitions
from high schools to community colleges. The other four states, Mr.
Dougherty said, have no such formal targets for minority students' access
and success. He quoted an unnamed education official in Virginia who told
the researchers that debates about racial equity were treated as political
dynamite in Richmond, the state capital.  "I think everyone who is in the
business treads softly on the issue of race," the official reportedly
said. And of the five states in the study, only two -- New Mexico and
Texas -- have adopted policies guaranteeing that illegal immigrants and
their children can be admitted to public universities and allowing them to
pay in-state tuition rates. The legislatures in the other three states --
Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia -- defeated bills that would have
guaranteed such access. (Indeed, one house of the Virginia General
Assembly approved a bill that would have banned the children of illegal
immigrants from attending the state's public colleges and universities.)

What might account for the sharp differences among those five states?
Researchers of state-level policy variations typically look at differences
in the states' political culture or their general political ideology. In
this case, however, those classic measures of state politics did not
explain any of the variation, Mr. Dougherty said. "Texas is the least
liberal of these five states," he said, and yet it has relatively
egalitarian policies. Instead, the factor that seems potentially most
powerful is the proportion of minorities in the states' population. New
Mexico's population is 52 percent minority, and Texas' level is 50
percent. The other three states' minority proportions are considerably
smaller, with Florida's the largest at 37 percent.

Describing his colleagues' interviews with education officials in Texas,
Mr. Dougherty speculated that as states move closer to "majority-minority"
status, their policy-making elites will become more sensitive to the need
to broaden educational access. He quoted a Texas community-college
president as saying, "If Hispanics continue to participate at a much lower
rate" than white students, "the result will be that we have a much less
educated work force and therefore will be much less competitive in
attempting to attract new business to the state." So Texas might be taking
steps to improve educational access, Mr.  Dougherty said, not because of
classically liberal or egalitarian sentiments, but in a "grudging,
human-capital-oriented" spirit.

"It's a sense that, 'This is our new labor force, these are the people we
will now depend on, so we need to engage their needs,'" Mr. Dougherty
said. "In Texas, this has produced what on the face of it we would say is
very progressive policy. But because it's not really founded on a solid
egalitarian sense, it might also take a very reactive turn." Mr. Dougherty
and his colleagues emphasized that their hypothesis about demography and
public policy was tentative, and said that no one should extrapolate too
much from a study of only five states. The policy audit was financed by
the Lumina Foundation for Education, and is related to the foundation's
"Achieving the Dream" project, which aims to improve the quality of
community colleges. The next phase of Mr.  Dougherty's project will
examine the policies of two additional states, Ohio and Connecticut.

"States continue to play a very important role in policy making," Mr.
Dougherty said. "We tend to think -- especially right now, with the
immigration bill -- that Washington makes the key decisions," he added,
referring to legislation pending in Congress. "We tend to forget that very
important decisions are made at the state level, and will continue to be
made at the state level, on issues such as affirmative action,
immigration, and racial policy more generally."