Ten Percent Plan in Texas – Policy Brief

In early May 2007, the Texas legislature is debating capping or eliminating the Texas Ten Percent Plan. To help inform the debate on the effects of the Texas Ten Percent Plan, IDRA has compiled and analyzed available data on the students entering the University of Texas at Austin and all the Texas high schools that contributed graduating seniors to those incoming freshmen classes between the years of 1995 and 2006.

Findings include:

• Since the adoption of the Ten Percent Plan, more Texas high schools have had their students enrolling at UT-Austin.
• Despite the Ten Percent Plan, a small number of Texas high schools continue to account for a large percentage of freshmen enrolling at UT-Austin.
• Texas feeder high schools with the largest number of freshmen enrollees also tend to have fewer numbers of low-income students.
• The Ten Percent Plan increases minority enrollment at UT- Austin.
• UT-Austin enrolls as many students from other countries as African American students from Texas.
• Hispanic undergraduates have only increased an average of fewer than 75 students per year over nine years.

Read the policy brief (pdf)

Tables
Attachment A: Economically-Disadvantaged Percentages in High School Feeders to UT-Austin, 2005-06 (pdf)
Attachment B: Race-Ethnicity Percentages in High School Feeders to UT-Austin, 2005-06 (pdf)
Attachment C: UT-Austin Feeder High School Losses by Reducing Automatic Top Ten Percent Plan Admissions (pdf)