The United States is home to more than 400,000 undocumented students in higher education, including 181,000 recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. This means that one out of every 50 students in college is undocumented. Unlike other college students, however, undocumented students must often navigate complex rules and regulations to access a higher education—solely on account of their immigration status.
This reality forms the basis of a new report from The Education Trust, which lays out road map for expanding higher education access and success to undocumented students.
In the report, researchers analyze nine criteria in the 15 states with the largest shares of undocumented college students—Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Washington—to determine whether state policies are helping or hurting undocumented students’ ability to attend college and how access and success for this underserved student population could be improved.