Does Higher College Tuition Lead to Decrease in College Enrollment?

College tuition has been on the rise, and even more so during the 21st century.  Since 2001, public college tuition has almost double in price, from $4,800 to $9,400! This is an outrageous as it has surpassed the rate of inflation in the economy.  So how do families continue to afford these crazy prices? Before researching I assumed that as tuition got higher in price more teenagers would either drop out of college or not enroll in the first place.  I hypothesized this because the median American family does not make enough money to fully pay for their child’s tuition without taking out loans.

A study was done in 2008 by professors Dr. Steven Hemelt and Dr. David Marcotte, that compared college tuition and enrollment rates.  They looked at “total headcount, total number of credits taken, and the number of first-time, full-time freshman” and found all this data from IPEDS, which is an “institution-level data set,” that shows all this information.  The two professors took data from over 600 four-year, public college universities in the United States. This experimental study showed data that an increase of tuition of $100 would bring a decrease in enrollment of .25%, and an increase in tuition of $210 would result in an enrollment decline of about 57 students.  Even though these 57 students were essentially “lost”, the institution is not loosing money because they increased their tuition rates so that money lost from the 57 students is being made up by the other students attending the university.  So yes colleges are loosing students due to increased tuition but not as many as one would think.  Students still want a good education and want to attend the best universities to obtain this so that they can have successful careers.  Families are willing to take out large loans and students are having to pay back these loans for many years post college just for their education.  Even though tuition increases students want to attend the schools has not changed making the enrollment rate not decrease by much each year.

 

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This graph shows how much tuition has risen for private four-year universities and public four-year universities over the span of time from 1994 to 2015.

Many other factors have an influence over enrollment rates into universities. Difference in demographics of who is attending the colleges has greatly changed.  The United States has more African Americans, Asians, Hispanics and other internal students attending the many institutions. This individuals want the higher education levels that might not be available in their own countries. This essentially “forces” those students to come to America and pay the high tuition rates which increases the amount of students that have enrolled at that particular school.

StudentTeacherRace1 Source

This graph shows the percentage of students of different races/ethnicities attending Public Schools.  The number of students that are not white, for the first time in 2014, surpassed the percentage of white students attending school.

Although college tuition is still on the rise, students and their families are willing to pay/attempt to pay the high prices if it means guaranteeing better education in the long run. This will not cause dramatic drops in enrollment into public universities as the need for a higher education is needed now more than ever.

6 thoughts on “Does Higher College Tuition Lead to Decrease in College Enrollment?

  1. Jada Baity

    I find this post to be very interesting because what some people don’t know is that Penn State has one of the (highest tuition rates) for a public school in the nation. (The Daily Collegian says that Penn State has to keep their tuition rates high because they receive less funding from the state of Pennsylvania than other universities do from their state. How accurate this is today, I don’t really know. But it’s good to know that there is a reason for the insanely high cost of attending Penn State.

  2. Amy Rosenzweig

    Even by just reading your title I initially came up with the same hypothesis that you stated in the beginning. To me it was a simple matter of the tuition rising to a decrease in students attending college due to rising prices and not being able to afford it. I like how you provided studies and evidence to back up your findings. I also really enjoy the graphs because it makes it easy to visualize the correlation between prices and students that attend college. I wonder if eventually the prices will go up even higher and if they will further effect the number of students that attend. It’s a scary thought but it could happen.

  3. Stephen Connelly

    There may be a decrease in enrollment, but like you stated, there is not a loss in revenue. It could be due to the fact obtaining a college degree is increasingly important and tuition rises are likely across the board. The other option to avoid state university rising costs could be community college, but that’s the only other institution these 57 “lost” students could go to.

  4. Dean Giammarco

    I could tell that just after reading the title the answer is yes. Tuition is large factor in college and unfortunately it is sad that it is so high and ending up being to costly for most families. You make great points in the post. The numbers came to be a bit low. I feel like enrollment would be dropping dramatically. And unless they do I fee like we will never see a decrease in price. As long as people keep paying why should they stop rising it? This is a sticky situation and I hope it does get resolved soon before my kids have to pay upwards of $100,000 a semester, because I defiantly won’t want to be paying that.

  5. Alexandra Herr

    I’m not sure I understand the conclusion you are making with this blog. You said how yes, higher tuition is causing less people to enroll but you also said that more races and ethnicities are enrolling, so the numbers are not dropping. In an article I found from CBS, it states that college enrollment fell nearly 2 percent from a year ago, and that article was written in May 2015. I think this statistic might help clarify.

    On the other hand, I liked how you tied in the economics aspect of it with science, making this blog unique for me compared to many others. I did not know that the rates have passed inflation rates prior to reading. I also think it is very relevant since everyone reading this blog is currently enrolled in an expensive public university. Penn State is the second most expensive public college or university in the United States (behind Pitt)!

  6. Holly Rubin

    In your blog your focused mainly on if an increase in college tuition decreases the amount of students willing to pay to go to school. Your conclusion was that students are still willing to pay, but in reality there are other factors with in this. First off, the minimum wage is increasing along with college tuitution. This may be helping families out to a point where the gap is not as large as it seems. But with this in mind, I think that more students might depend on going to state schools or schools that they received more scholarship to. This may also result in students going to schools not quite up to their standards when it comes to their GPA solely for money. For example, the State University of New York has an enrollment of 459,550 students. About 85% of these students are in state and pay $20,000 or less for their college education. When looking at graphs of instate students attending SUNY schools over the years, there is a direct trend where increase in college tuition increases the amount of students going SUNY. With Penn State being nearly double for an out of state student, the out of state enrollment may decrease with an increase in tuition instead of the overall amount of students attending college.

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