Abstract
Scholarship on college choice largely focuses on how students search for colleges but less is known about how colleges recruit students. This article analyzes off-campus recruiting visits for 15 public research universities. We Web-scrape university admissions websites and issue public records requests to collect data on recruiting visits. Analyses explore the similarities and differences in off-campus recruiting patterns across universities in the study. Results reveal socioeconomic, racial, and geographic disparities in recruiting patterns. In particular, most universities made more out-of-state than in-state visits, and out-of-state visits systematically targeted affluent, predominantly White localities. We recommend that future research should exploit new data collection methodologies to develop a systematic literature on marketing and recruiting practices in higher education.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1270-1314 |
Number of pages | 45 |
Journal | American Educational Research Journal |
Volume | 58 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2021 |
Keywords
- admissions
- case studies
- colleges
- descriptive analysis
- diversity
- educational policy
- higher education
- organization theory/change
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education