Determinants and Distributional Aspects of Enrollment in U.S. Higher Education

Based upon human capital theory, an enrollment model for higher education is formulated with demand being subject to nonprice rationing by academic admission standards. Cross-sectional differences in student enrollment are related to variables representing both demand factors and supply-side constraints. Two questionnaire surveys - Project Talent's national cross-sectional sample in the early 1960s and a recent survey of 4,000 high school seniors in the Boston SMSA - provide sufficient data to test the theoretical hypothesis derived. At both levels of aggregation, strong structural relationships between college attendance and socioeconomic status emerge. Stratifying the on-going group by socioeconomic quartiles yields insights into the distributional aspects of higher education enrollment.