Privilege or Pathway? Latent Profiles and Unequal Academic Returns from High-Impact Practices in Higher Education

High-impact practices (HIPs)—structured, effortful learning experiences such as internships, undergraduate research, service learning, study abroad, learning communities, and capstone projects—are widely promoted as mechanisms to strengthen student engagement and academic achievement. However, in stratified higher education systems, participation in HIPs may yield unequal academic returns. This study examines these dynamics in Colombia by identifying latent participation pathways among 1689 final-year undergraduate students enrolled in accredited private universities. Using latent class analysis (LCA), four participation configurations were identified—comprehensive, academic-focused, practical, and minimal—with systematic variation by gender and academic discipline. Higher cumulative grade point averages (GPAs) were observed only among students in the comprehensive pathway, indicating that academic value depends on the coherent alignment of multiple academically integrative practices rather than on isolated participation. No significant GPA advantage emerged for partial or practice-oriented configurations. These findings indicate that institutional and disciplinary ecologies condition whether experiential learning translates into academic achievement, challenging universalist assumptions about HIP effectiveness. The study reframes HIP participation as a configuration-dependent opportunity structure and highlights the limits of access-based evaluation approaches when HIPs are scaled within unequal higher education systems.