{"id":892,"date":"2014-05-03T10:00:09","date_gmt":"2014-05-03T10:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/?p=892"},"modified":"2014-05-03T09:33:36","modified_gmt":"2014-05-03T09:33:36","slug":"changes-in-college-enrollment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/2014\/05\/03\/changes-in-college-enrollment\/","title":{"rendered":"Changes in College Enrollment"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recent data released by the U.S. Census, it was found that college enrollment was at its lowest rate since the recession hit in 2007.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Taken from fivethirtyeight.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The graph points out that college enrollment often rises during recessions. I found this to be very interesting. When a recession hits, and unemployment rises, and consumption falls. I would have thought that college enrollment would fall as well. But that isn’t the case. What we see occurring is in fact the opposite. During the first 2-3 years of our recession, we see college enrollment on a steady climb, and when our economy slowly started to recover, we see a fall in enrollment.<\/p>\n

The question I asked myself was why would more people want to go to college when the economy is struggling than when it is in an upturn. The answer probably is attributed to multiple factors. The first thing that I thought of when seeing this trend was that college tuition may be responsive to swings in the economy, and when the recession hit, tuitions may have fallen in response the the fall in demand. But according to CollegeBoard.org, average tuition of all varieties of college actually increased since 08-09 as you can see here.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This would direct me away from believing that changing tuition prices are the cause of increasing enrollment during a depression. In a blog by Ben Casselman on fivethirtyeight.com<\/a>, he points out that the fall in college enrollment after the recession could be attributed to the strengthening job market. If more potential college attendees can find employment they may make the decision to work rather than enroll in school. \u00a0Casselman points out that the largest declines in enrollment were in part-time and community colleges.<\/p>\n

This points out some interesting characteristics of the market for college education, telling us that it may not respond to changes in the economy in the way that we thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recent data released by the U.S. Census, it was found that college enrollment was at its lowest rate since the recession hit in 2007. The graph points out that college enrollment often rises during recessions. I found this to be very interesting. When a recession hits, and unemployment rises, and consumption falls. I would have thought that college enrollment would fall as well. But that isn’t the case. What we see occurring is in fact the opposite. During the first 2-3 years of our recession, we see college enrollment on a steady climb, and when our economy slowly started Continue reading Changes in College Enrollment<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":435,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/435"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":925,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892\/revisions\/925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}