A long history of research on the relationship between tuition prices, financial aid, and enrollment in colleges and universities has confirmed the existence of a downward sloping demand curve for higher education, i.e., as the price of college increases, individuals are less likely to enroll, ceteris paribus. Most of these studies have limited applicability to the state of public higher education today, however, because of a number of limitations. The limitations include: examining enrollment behavior at only a single point in time; no comparison of behavior among students of different racial groups; no distinction between students in community colleges and 4-year institutions, or between first-time freshmen students and students of all years; and no comparison between full-time and part-time students.

This thesis expands on and supplements the earlier literature by examining the relationship between public tuition prices, state need-based grant spending, and public college enrollments. Trends in tuition prices, public college enrollment, and state grant spending are first examined nationally and for regions of the country. A panel dataset then is used to fit fixed-effects models of enrollment behavior in the 50 states from 1976 to 1994. A particular emphasis is placed on differences in enrollment behavior among four racial groups (Asian-American, Black, Hispanic, and White students), as well as between college sectors, year in college (freshmen versus all undergraduates), and attendance status (full-time versus part-time).