College-Going in the Era of High Expectations: Racial/Ethnic Disparities in College Enrollment, 2006 to 2015

Adolescents with high educational expectations are more likely to enroll in college. Although most adolescents today report high educational expectations, there remains important racial/ethnic heterogeneity in college enrollment patterns. In particular, at every level of socioeconomic status, minority youth have higher educational expectations than their white peers yet enroll in college at lower rates. The rapidly increasing size and college enrollment of the Hispanic population motivate renewed examination of the expectation-enrollment relationship. Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) and the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS), the author examines whether the relationship between adolescent educational expectations and enrollment in a four-year college within two years of high school graduation differs by race/ethnicity and whether this relationship changed over time. The author finds that the expectation-enrollment relationship is positive for all students but is smaller for black and Hispanic students in the ELS cohort. However, by the HSLS cohort, the gaps have largely closed.