The First State Dream Act: In-State Resident Tuition and Immigration in Texas

In 2001, Texas became the first state to pass an in-state resident tuition policy that benefits undocumented immigrant students, a majority of whom are of Latino/a origin. This analysis estimates the effect of the Texas in-state resident tuition policy on students likely to be undocumented. Using a differences-in-differences strategy and two extensive data sets, results indicate that foreign-born non-citizen Latino/a students were more likely to attend college after the introduction of the Texas benefit. The results were strongest for older high school graduates, who were found to be 4.84 times more likely to have enrolled in college than not after the tuition policy than their counterparts in Southwestern states without a tuition policy. Multiple tests show that results are robust regardless of specification.