About College Enrollment

In economics, demand is characterized as a buyer’s capacity and willingness to pay for products and services at a given price over a given time span. Demand principles have been applied not only in industry but also in other areas such as education and economics. As a result, the emphasis of this paper is on the factors influencing college enrollment demand.

When we plot the price against the quantity demanded, we get a demand curve, which is used to illustrate the rule of demand.

Person income growth can trigger movement along the demand curve. People will have enough money to pay for school fees when their income is increased, and this directly affects the demand for college enrollment (Brown, McClary & Bellingar, 2012). Therefore, people will afford to pay for school fees even at high rates of tuition fees in institutions of higher learning.

Lower college tuition

Lower college tuition implies more families will be in a position to pay the tuition fee for their children, therefore, increasing the demand for education (Keppo, 2017). In this case, there will be a movement along the demand curve.

D1

P0

Price

P1

D1 D0 D1 Demand for education

In this regard, the movement along the demand curve is affected by the increase in income and lower college tuition. In both cases, the demand for college education increases from D0 to D1.

Increased number of graduating high school seniors

While holding other factors constant, more students will be willing to enroll for college education (Brown et al., 2012). Moreover, this will put pressure on the government to increase the number of colleges and also increase the intake per college to accommodate the increase in demand for college education. Therefore, the demand curve shifts to the right.

D2 D4

P0

Price

D5

D3 D0 D1 Demand for education

The above figure shows a shift in demand to the right from D2D3 to D4D5. That implies that at the same point P0, the demand changes from D0 to D1.

References

Brown, C. C., McClary, A., & Bellingar, J. (2012). Determinants of student demand at Florida Southern College. Journal of Case Research in Business and Economics, 4, 1.

Keppo, J. (2017). College Tuition: Explaining the Increases. Seeking Alpha. Retrieved 15 July 2017, from https://seekingalpha.com/article/144835-college-tuition-explaining-the-increases