Meet Dr. Karina Salazar, Assistant Professor in The Center for The Study of Higher Education

Using data science methodologies and the Freedom of Information Act as data collection strategies, her research agenda analyzes how the recruiting practices of public universities shape whether and where students go to college.  

The first thread of this research program analyzes off-campus recruiting visits. These events primarily occur at the height of recruiting season when admissions professionals travel across the country visiting schools and communities in efforts to solicit admissions applications.  Using web-scraped travel schedules from university websites, her research explores where recruiters go and do not go to recruit prospective students (Salazar et al., 2021). Dr. Salazar’s highly cited study in The Journal of Higher Education (Salazar, 2022) conducts a geospatial analysis of high schools that receive recruiting visits across two metropolitan areas. Findings reveal that schools in White communities are more likely to receive multiple recruiting visits and visits by multiple universities than schools in Communities of Color with comparable income and educational achievement characteristics. Such recruiting patterns mimic systemic relations of power within geographic space that contribute to the social, economic, and educational disenfranchisement of Communities of Color, which is a pattern Dr. Salazar coins as “recruitment redlining.” 

A second thread of this research program analyzes “student lists.” Colleges purchase student lists from the College Board (and other data vendors) that contain the contact information of prospective students who satisfy “search filter” criteria (e.g., test score range, high school GPA, zip code) specified by the university, who can then be recruited via mail, email, or targeted social media. Research suggests such interventions influence whether and where millions of students go to college each year, with Black and Latinx first-generation college students experiencing the largest benefits to being included on students lists (Howell et al., 2021).  However, using public records requests to collect data on student list purchases by public universities, Dr. Salazar's work (Jaquette & Salazar, 2024) reveals Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students are more likely to be excluded from student list purchases due to two mechanisms: 1) student list databases from The College Board and ACT have historically excluded non-test takers, but rates of test-taking differ by race/ethnicity; and 2) Academic (e.g., PSAT score) and geographic (e.g., zipcode) filters used by universities for efficient list buying compound racial disparities between included versus excluded prospective students. 

Within this research strand, Dr. Salazar is currently working on scholarship at the nexus of geography, race, and technology that explores how third-party proprietary products, services, and organizations in the Education Technology sector act as match-making intermediaries that connect prospective students to colleges. 

Dr. Salazar's research has made a profound impact on national discourses regarding college access. Her work has been featured by several major media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Inside Higher Ed, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Her work has also been published by national research and advocacy organizations like The Institute for College Access and Success, The Joyce Foundation, and EdTrust.  To learn more about Dr. Salazar’s research, check out her Google Scholar profile.