College enrollment during the business cycle: Evidence from the Great Recession

There are two competing forces acting on the decision of high school seniors to attend college during a recession. As family income falls, the income effect leads a student to decide not to attend college. As employmnet becomes more difficult to attain for a new graduate and the opportunity cost of attending college declines, the substitution effect leads a student to enroll. Our paper builds on the work of Dellas and Sakellaris (2003) They used CPS data for 1968 through 1988. We update the data through 2009 and also use the American Community Survey (ACS) dataset from 2001 through 2009 in an effort to determine whether the Great Recession has affected enrollments differently than previous recessions.