This study actually reviewed a large urban school district over six years of graduates, and found that students eligible for automatic admission under the Texas law are more likely to be white and female, and less likely to be low-income.
Other findings: "eligibility for automatic admission appears to have little effect on college enrollment and choice for the most-disadvantaged urban high schools."
The point they appear to be making is that socioeconomic and diversity impacts aren't presenting, and that the only clear result is that more top-ranked kids (many of whom already have their choice of schools) are choosing state over private/out-of-state. There doesn't seem to be a demonstrated result of increasing matriculation among under-represented students. That's just my read.
Quote:
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But the effects on flagship enrollment are concentrated in the district’s most-advantaged schools. Indeed, when we calculate effects by the percentage of students at a high school who attend college, we find no evidence of effects on college choice in the schools with the lowest college-sending rates. Although the college-sending rates of the highest-performing high schools in the sample are low relative to Texas as a whole, our findings suggest that offering eligibility for automatic admission may not be effective at accomplishing even the narrow goal of increasing access to the top public universities for students in the most-disadvantaged settings.
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All this is only to say: I am no higher ed expert, but it seems counter-intuitive to me that we can know that automatic admissions is keeping more non-white students "at home" in Texas public universities, or that we can assume that it will create a more diverse Texas workforce.
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