Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Organizations representative of the general population often see improved outcomes for the population served. Representative bureaucracy literature examines these relationships by focusing on the representation of marginalized bureaucrats and the outcomes for clients with shared racial, ethnic and gender identities. Previous studies have focused on African-American, Latinx, female or event military veteran identities and may overlook successful client outcomes for American Indians, Asian Americans, and non-citizen populations due to data limitations. This creates a critical gap in understanding how bureaucratic organizations create positive representation effect for extremely underrepresented client groups such as indigenous populations and undocumented residents that may receive public services. The current study examines determinants of success for these vulnerable populations in higher education through a lens of representative bureaucracy using data from the Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). Using panel data on all U.S. colleges and universities from 2001-2016 we estimate fixed effects OLS models examining how representation of noncitizen faculty and staff relate to improved success rates for noncitizen students. Additionally we examine the representation effects for American Indians and Asian Americans, two populations often overlooked in representative bureaucracy literature. Preliminary results suggest a direct correlation between the shared identities of interest among faculty members and success among student populations. These findings suggest that bureaucratic representation goes beyond racial, ethnic and gender identity and extends to a noncitizen identity shared between bureaucrats and clients. Implications towards policy and general representation are discussed.