| Thurston Domina
University of California, Irvine
Shockwaves: Tracing the effects of affirmative action bans through the high school to college transition
FINAL REPORT
In the 1990s, several U.S. states prohibited public colleges from considering race in admissions. In addition to depressing minority enrollment rates at selective public colleges and universities, research suggests that affirmative action bans also depress black and Hispanic students' odds of enrolling in selective private universities, where students' admissions odds should be unrelated to state policy (Card and Krueger 2005; Long 2004). To understand this finding, I hypothesize that admissions policies influence students' prefigurative commitments to higher education. Using two cohorts of nationally representative data, I generate difference-in-difference estimates of the consequences of affirmative action bans on racial inequality across the high school-to-college transition. The analyses indicate that affirmative action bans broaden racial inequalities in selective college access. More broadly, they suggest that affirmative action bans reduce minority high school students' educational expectations, AP test-taking odds, and skill acquisition.
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