"Since 2001, and starting with Texas, ten states have passed laws allowing undocumented students to qualify for lower in-state tuition rates. These statutes continue to be controversial (California's is currently being challenged in the courts; Oklahoma's was repealed) and legal scholars have written extensively about whether or not they conflict with federal law. Stella M. Flores, meanwhile, has focused on another question - whether or not they work," Inside Higher Ed reports. "Flores, an assistant professor of public policy and higher education at Vanderbilt University, finds that they do. In two forthcoming studies, she finds, first, that foreign-born, noncitizen Latinos are 1.54 times more likely to enroll in college if they live in a state with an in-state tuition policy, compared to similar students who don't. Also she finds that, at least in the case of the University of Texas at Austin, undocumented students are as likely to persist in college as their Latino peers with U.S. citizenship."