California Dreamin': DACA's Decline and Undocumented College Student Enrollment in the Golden State
Journal of College and University Law, accepted for publication in volume 50, issue 1 (2025) (forthcoming)
52 Pages Posted: 19 Oct 2024
Date Written: September 12, 2024
Abstract
With Congressional efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform mired in gridlock, over the past dozen years the federal effort to provide relief to undocumented young adults has been through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA may go before the U.S. Supreme Court for the second time in 2025. There is surprisingly little concrete and comprehensive recent data on undocumented and “DACA-mented” college student enrollment patterns.
This is the first article to report hard data on contemporary enrollment trends for undocumented college students, an era marked by increasing constrictions of DACA. Our first main finding is that between 2016-17 (just prior to the partial DACA rescission) to 2022-23, newly enrolled low-income undocumented students declined by half at University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) campuses. Our second main finding is that for UC and CSU low-income undocumented students overall (new and continuing students) there was a 30% decline between 2018-19 and 2022-23 (the second finding reflects a delayed impact as earlier large cohorts took time to graduate). Our third finding is that there were not notable declines over the same period in our “control” groups—other low- and lower-middle income students at UC and CSU with similar academic profiles—which supports our inference about the causal role of DACA’s decline on decreasing undocumented student enrollments.
Section IV pivots to several ongoing areas of promising reforms and mitigation strategies that can be pursued by public universities with an interest in supporting undocumented student success. These are strategies to consider regardless of how DACA fares in the Supreme Court. We analyze relevant case law regarding the “Opportunity for All” campaign in the UC, which is based on the claim that public universities may lawfully employ undocumented students. We also summarize innovative public-private partnerships for scholarships and other support for undocumented students and immigrant rights.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation