Gender Identity and Access to Higher Education

Abstract

Our research examines the potential gender identity discrimination within higher education. An audit study was conducted by sending emails to admission counselors, where the messages varied in the inclusion of gender pronouns in the signature line. The results indicate a higher response rate for emails which included preferred pronouns, with a response rate increase of approximately four percentage points, regardless of the type of pronoun used. This suggests a preference for students that are more progressive in their thinking. We engage in text analysis and show that responses to inquiries with pronouns received more friendly responses receiving more use of exclamation marks, emojis/emoticons, and from a topic modeling algorithm were less likely to be strictly replies explaining the admission process. Finally, we apply machine learning to identify key institution attributes that are useful in predicting heterogeneous responses, and to identify the attributes of institutions where negative discrimination is likely to occur.

Keywords: admissions; audit study; discrimination, gender, higher education, machine learning, neopronouns, pronouns, Random Forest

JEL Classification: J16, I24, K38