The Impact of Tuition Increases on Enrollment in the State of Alabama Public Colleges and Universities

In this paper we estimate the impact of the steep increases in tuition since 2002 on enrollment in public universities in the state of Alabama. We are interested in determining if enrollment in regional universities, which serve a more diverse and non-traditional set of students, is more sensitive to prices than enrollment in more traditional institutions. We estimate different models that control for several relevant variables and find that the elasticity of demand is approximately -0.44 if the University of Alabama and Auburn University are included in the sample while the elasticity is -0.55 if those two institutions are not included.