Understanding Student Enrollment Behavior

In the 1970s, projections clearly indicated that the traditional college student cohort of 18 to 21 year olds would fall by 25 percent between the late 1970s and the early 1990s (WICHE 1988). Colleges unhappily watched the number of traditional college-level jobs per college graduate decrease. Potential students became consumers and flexed their newfound marketplace muscle. Fears of cutbacks in important sources of student financial aid intensified as the 1970s came to an end. The higher education marketplace was changing in many ways which threatened to produce significant enrollment declines.