The majority of youth who experience foster care want to go to college. Unfortunately, few achieve their post-secondary goals. Many states have developed programs and policies to increase the level of support available to students who have experienced foster care (SEFC). However, most of these initiatives have not been evaluated. The present study examines two emergent strategies in Texas; a) an unfunded legislative mandate to appoint a liaison on every college/university campus to serve SEFC and, b) a grassroots movement to develop campus support programs for SEFC at particular institutions. We evaluate these programs and policies using a unique data set that merges historical data from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, academic records from the Texas Higher Education Board, and primary data collected from campus websites and liaison surveys. Our data from 2012–2021 revealed that retention rates for SEFC did not increase in association with the liaison legislation. However, our analysis from the 2020–2021 academic year revealed that students who attended four-year universities with a campus support program had significantly higher retention rates than students who attended comparable schools without these programs (41% higher). However, we did not find a benefit of campus support programs for students attending community colleges. We conclude that higher education support can improve retention rates of SEFC. However, success is not guaranteed, but rather is contingent on funding, execution, and context. We call for ongoing assessment of existing strategies in order to identify best practices for improving post-secondary outcomes of SEFC.

大多数经历过寄养的青少年都想上大学。不幸的是，很少有人能实现他们的高等教育目标。许多州已经制定了计划和政策，以提高对经历过寄养 （SEFC） 的学生可获得的支持水平。然而，这些举措中的大多数尚未得到评估。本研究考察了德克萨斯州的两种新兴策略;a） 在每所学院/大学校园任命一名联络员为 SEFC 服务的无资金立法授权，以及 b） 在特定机构为 SEFC 制定校园支持计划的草根运动。我们使用一个独特的数据集来评估这些计划和政策，该数据集合并了来自德克萨斯州家庭和保护服务部的历史数据、德克萨斯州高等教育委员会的学术记录以及从校园网站和联络调查收集的原始数据。我们 2012 年至 2021 年的数据显示，SEFC 的保留率并没有随着联络立法而增加。然而，我们对 2020-2021 学年的分析显示，就读于有校园支持计划的四年制大学的学生的保留率明显高于没有这些计划的同类学校的学生（高出 41%）。但是，我们没有发现校园支持计划对就读社区大学的学生有好处。我们得出结论，高等教育支持可以提高 SEFC 的保留率。然而，成功并不能保证，而是取决于资金、执行和背景。我们呼吁对现有策略进行持续评估，以确定改善 SEFC 高等教育结果的最佳实践。