Nonexperimental Designs and Causal Analyses of College Access, Persistence, and Completion

Access to college is limited for some students, especially those from disadvantaged or underrepresented groups. For example, the college enrollment rate of high-income high school graduates is about 80%, whereas only about 55% of their low-income counterparts enroll in college. This 25 percentage point difference remains substantial even though the gap has narrowed over the last two decades (Baum, Ma, & Payea, 2010).