Because online courses increase convenience and remove pressures of transportation and scheduling, they are often touted as a means to increase equitable access to higher education. However, in recent studies, the outcomes of students enrolled in fully online courses tend to be poorer than those of their face-to-face counterparts. With this project, we seek to understand whether online courses preferentially attract, and then disadvantage, underserved student demographics--thus functioning as an “access trap” to vulnerable student populations.