Permanent Contagion or Transitory Promise?

Abstract: This paper addresses whether, for whom and how knowledge of the Texas top 10 % law influences college intentions and enrollment behavior at two- versus four-year institutions. Analyses are based on the Texas Educational Opportunity Survey, a representative sample of 13,803 Texas high school seniors as of spring, 2002, of whom a random sample were re-interviewed a year later. We find that knowledge of the top 10 % law not only predicts college intentions, but appears to focus students ’ preferences on four-year institutions. Students who reported knowing a lot about the top 10 % law were 4.6 times as likely as their counterparts who did not know about the law to indicate they planned to attend a four-year institution relative to not attending, other things equal. Compared with white students, blacks and Hispanics are less likely, and Asian origin students are more likely, to report themselves as college bound. However, once family background is taken into account, blacks are more likely than whites to report plans to enroll in a four-year institution. Using the merged wave 1 and 2 file, we find further confirmation that knowledge of the top 10 % law was related to enrollment behavior, as students who reported knowing a lot about H.B.588 were about 5.5 times as likely to enroll in a four-year institution, and 1.8 times as likely to enroll in a 2-year institution compared with their statistical counterparts who did not know about the law. Th