Testing Increasing Sensitivity of Enrollment at Private Institutions to Tuition and Other Costs

This paper re-examines the demand for higher education at private institutions and tests if in recent years enrollment has become more sensitive to rising tuition and other related costs. Time series data between FY 1964-65 and FY 1990-91 are used as the sample. Major findings are interesting. The general functional form yields coefficients with smaller standard errors and larger value of the test statistics. The logarithmic form can be rejected at the 5% level. Tuition elasticities rose from -0.261 to -0.557 and income elasticities also increased from 0.493 to 1.093 during the sample period. Thus, enrollment has become more sensitive to changes in tuition and other costs. However, part of the loss of enrollment due to tuition increases can be recovered by rising income elasticities.