CBE Research Seminar Series - Competition in U.S. Higher Education Since the Great Recession
Join us for the first CBE Research Seminar of Fall 2026. Eric Stuen, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, and Marc Chopin, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, will share their research on price competition, the enrollment cliff and strategic enrollment management in higher education.
Abstract: Factors such as declining college enrollment and the expansion of online education have intensified competition between universities. We analyze how responsive university pricing is to competitors’ pricing, both locally and nationally. We do this by constructing distance-weighted indexes of the pricing of all other universities. In contrast with prior studies, we find greater price competition between public and doctoral universities than private universities, and greater price responses to the national market than local competitors. These results confirm prior studies’ findings of increasing use of strategic pricing by public universities and stratification of the U.S. system into tiers of competition.
University Location: ALB 311 - J. A. Albertson - Main Campus. Participate Online: https://uidaho.zoom.us/j/84570005053?from=addon.
Friday, October 16, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM.