The Texas Ten Percent Plan’s Significant Impact on College Enrollment

   
Texas created the Texas Ten Percent Plan in 1997 as a way to maintain diversity in its public universities. The program provides students in the top 10 percent of their high school class with automatic admission to any public university in the state, including the state’s flagship colleges -- the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M.

In a new study appearing in the Summer 2014 issue of Education Next, Lindsay Daugherty, Paco Martorell, and Isaac McFarlin Jr. examine the effects the plan has had on college enrollment.
Focusing their analysis on students in a large urban school district in Texas that historically has sent few students to college, the authors find that students who make it into the top 10 percent of their class (including underrepresented minority students) are 60% more likely than students who just missed the cutoff to enroll at a Texas flagship university.