About

Denisa Gándara serves as an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research primarily focuses on higher education policy and politics, with a dedicated emphasis on advancing populations traditionally underserved in higher education. Her work has contributed to national conversations on higher education policy and has been supported by prominent organizations such as the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, the Ford Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, and the American Educational Research Association. She has been appointed by President Joe Biden to the National Board for Education Sciences and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Institute for Higher Education Policy, where she contributes to research-policy connections. Her honors include a William T. Grant Scholar award, a Ford Foundation Fellowship, and the 2024 Association for the Study of Higher Education's CPPHE Excellence in Public Policy Higher Education Award. In 2025, she and her co-authors received the American Educational Research Association's Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award for an outstanding article. She is an associate editor for The Journal of Higher Education and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Postsecondary Student Success and Higher Education Policy. A Dean's Distinguished Graduate from The University of Texas at Austin, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia's Institute of Higher Education. Her upbringing in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas continues to inspire her dedication to expanding educational opportunities for underserved communities.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Medicine
• Economics
• Medical education
• Psychology
• Economic growth
• Demographic economics
• Sociology
• Public relations
• Mathematics education
• Demography
• Gender studies
• Public administration

Selected publications

• "Hopefully This Thing Is Legit:" Student Experiences of Administrative Burden with a Promise Program

  Journal of Student Financial Aid · 2026-05-13

  article

  Despite the expansion of tuition-free college (Promise) programs as a financial aid strategy, little is known about how students learn about, navigate, and experience them. This qualitative case study examines how second-year students encounter administrative burdens in a Promise program (PROMISE) at a large university that seeks to minimize compliance costs. Findings reveal a tradeoff between ease of access (low compliance costs) and program-related information (high learning costs). Minimal eligibility requirements contrast with limited marketing, leaving students misinformed about key aspects of their aid. Elevated learning and psychological costs generate stress and uncertainty. Despite these challenges, students draw on navigational, resistence, and familial capital to sustain their enrollment and support peers. Results have implications for the design, communication, and implementation of promise programs to ensure equitable access and student success.

  PublisherDOI

• Developmental Course Taking and Academic Outcomes for Community College Students Who Use Disability Services

  New Directions for Community Colleges · 2025-08-28

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Enrollment in developmental courses is a measure of college readiness and a common experience among US college students, particularly those with disabilities at 2‐year colleges. In this study, we examine how enrollment in developmental coursework is associated with engagement and academic outcomes among students who use disability services. Using data from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) 2021–2023 cohort ( N = 218,302 students, 481 community and technical colleges, 44 states) and multilevel structural equation modeling, we find that developmental course enrollment is associated with higher levels of engagement and perceived academic skills and career preparation. The results have implications for supporting students with disabilities in entering and completing college.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• “There’s something ennobling…about struggling”: State policymakers’ framing of deservingness in the New Mexico Opportunity Scholarship

  Education Policy Analysis Archives · 2025-03-18 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In 2022, New Mexico joined the list of states that adopted a statewide promise program, offering tuition and fee assistance for eligible students to pursue higher education. The New Mexico Opportunity Scholarship (NMOS) differs from existing programs by including part-time and summer enrollment, academic and workforce degrees, and older adult learners in addition to recent high school graduates. Drawing on approximately nine hours of legislative meetings and the theories of social construction and policy design and deservingness, this case study examines how state legislators framed their support or opposition to the design of the NMOS. We found that state legislators who supported the NMOS focused on individual benefits such as expanding access to higher education and improving employment outcomes, whereas state legislators who opposed the NMOS focused on state burdens such as insufficient funding and increased costs to the state due to the program’s flexible design.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Politics and Policy of Federal Education Policy Research:

  2025-07-17

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• "It's an Old White Boys' Club:" Faculty of Color's Perceptions of Policy Engagement

  Review of higher education/˜The œreview of higher education · 2025-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract: Scholars of color remain underrepresented in policymaking contexts, and the absence of their expertise in policy processes can have significant consequences for society. In this study, we examine motivations for and perceived barriers to engagement in public policymaking among faculty of color. Using an institutional logics framework and interviews with 20 tenure-stream faculty of color at 20 research universities, we identify three main themes that elucidate their perceptions of public policy engagement: (1) the network-driven, racialized nature of public policymaking spaces; (2) communal motivations and perceived benefits of public policy engagement; and (3) the double-edged sword of engaging with public policymaking.

  PublisherDOI

• Promise Programs and the Allocation of Institutional Expenditures at Community Colleges

  Community College Review · 2024-12-14

  articleOpen access

  Objective/Research Question: Many localities have implemented promise programs, which cover tuition for students to attend college based on residency criteria. These “free college” programs have been shown to increase student enrollment, creating the need for additional institutional resources to support student graduation. We analyzed the impact of 30 promise programs, each targeting a single community college, on institutional expenditures. Methods: Using data from 2001 to 2002 to 2015 to 2016, we incorporated generalized difference-in-differences estimation strategies and panel event-studies. Results: We find that the full sample of community colleges did not change their total spending per student nor their spending in the categories of instruction, student services, academic support, or institutional support. For privately funded programs, which receive revenues from donors, businesses, and philanthropic foundations, the affected colleges increased their institutional support per student. In contrast, publicly funded programs, which receive revenues from the college itself, the college foundation, or repurposed local appropriations, experienced increases in student services. Colleges with a combination of funding sources (mixed) observed no changes to spending in any category. Conclusions/Contributions: This study generates knowledge about expenditures within colleges, starting the conversation about adequacy of financial support, and investigates a first-level effect of programs on institutional expenditures to uncover the missing link between promise programs and enrollment outcomes.

  PublisherDOI

• Correction To: Higher Education Policy Narratives during COVID-19: How are Budget Requests Justified to State Legislatures?

  Research in Higher Education · 2024-09-23

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Assessing Disparities in Predictive Modeling Outcomes for College Student Success: The Impact of Imputation Techniques on Model Performance and Fairness

  Education Sciences · 2024-01-29 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access

  The education sector has been quick to recognize the power of predictive analytics to enhance student success rates. However, there are challenges to widespread adoption, including the lack of accessibility and the potential perpetuation of inequalities. These challenges present in different stages of modeling, including data preparation, model development, and evaluation. These steps can introduce additional bias to the system if not appropriately performed. Substantial incompleteness in responses is a common problem in nationally representative education data at a large scale. This can lead to missing data and can potentially impact the representativeness and accuracy of the results. While many education-related studies address the challenges of missing data, little is known about the impact of handling missing values on the fairness of predictive outcomes in practice. In this paper, we aim to assess the disparities in predictive modeling outcomes for college student success and investigate the impact of imputation techniques on model performance and fairness using various notions. We conduct a prospective evaluation to provide a less biased estimation of future performance and fairness than an evaluation of historical data. Our comprehensive analysis of a real large-scale education dataset reveals key insights on modeling disparities and the impact of imputation techniques on the fairness of the predictive outcome under different testing scenarios. Our results indicate that imputation introduces bias if the testing set follows the historical distribution. However, if the injustice in society is addressed and, consequently, the upcoming batch of observations is equalized, the model would be less biased.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• “All Students Matter”: The Place of Race in Discourse on Student Debt in a Federal Higher Education Policymaking Process

  Teachers College Record The Voice of Scholarship in Education · 2024-02-01 · 2 citations

  article

  Background: Nearly two decades have passed since the last successful reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Since then, student loan debt and the accumulation patterns based on race have become a pressing issue to address in U.S. society. Purpose: Student debt is one of the key issues on the federal higher education policy agenda. The purpose of this paper is to examine how race is addressed in a congressional hearing held to discuss the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Specifically, we examined one congressional policy markup hearing to understand how members frame student debt and the racialized dynamics embedded within. Research Design: We combined critical race theory and racial frames to discursively analyze 14 hours of congressional hearings on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Through critical discourse analysis, we interrogated the racialized discourse among policymakers as they proposed solutions and alternatives to address the issue of student debt during the policy markup process. Conclusions/Recommendations: Our findings highlight four types of discourse within a policy markup hearing: “All Students” Matter, Paternalistic, Race-Evasive, and Explicit Racial Discourse. We offer recommendations for policymakers and researchers to contend with ahistoricism and race-evasiveness prevalent in policy markup hearings and ways for future policy proposals to be more explicit in naming the groups facing disproportionate negative impact, the mechanisms that produce such inequities, and interventions that can address them.

  PublisherDOI

• Higher Education Policy Narratives during COVID-19: How are Budget Requests Justified to State Legislatures?

  Research in Higher Education · 2024-06-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  During economic recessions, state funding for higher education contracts (Delaney & Doyle, 2011; Hovey, 1999; SHEEO, 2022). Despite this reality, public higher education officials need to offer insights and explanations to state legislators about the current status of their institutions and their needs when discussing their budget requests. We use a multiple case-study design, framed by the narrative policy framework, to examine how campus officials in California and Texas justify their budget requests to the state legislature during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on 131 h of transcribed legislative budget meetings and 62 documents, our findings suggest that higher education leaders emphasize the economic functions of higher education and center their ability to successfully manage during these uncertain and difficult times by highlighting improved or stable accountability measures such as enrollment, persistence, graduation, and job placement rates. During these budget requests, there are commonalities between the states regarding the structure, justifications, and narrative strategies used. However, higher education leaders evoked different narrative objects depending on the perceived values, beliefs, and norms of their state legislators.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sosanya Jones

  Howard University

  11 shared

• Amanda E Assalone

  10 shared

• Tiffany Jones

  Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

  9 shared

• Kayla C. Elliott

  Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies

  9 shared

• LaToya Russell Owens

  Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

  9 shared

• Meredith S. Billings

  The University of Texas at Arlington

  7 shared

• Amy Y. Li

  6 shared

• Hadis Anahideh

  University of Illinois Chicago

  6 shared

Labs

• Educational Leadership and PolicyPI

Awards & honors

• William T. Grant Scholar award
• Ford Foundation Fellowship
• Association for the Study of Higher Education's CPPHE Excell…
• American Educational Research Association's Palmer O. Johnso…
• Dean's Distinguished Graduate from The University of Texas a…