The determinants of out-of-state enrollments in higher education: A tobit analysis

Abstract The present study measures the determinants of out-of-state enrollments at institutions of higher learning throughout the United States. By employing a relatively large, institution-level data set, the present paper improves upon previous work in this area of human capital theory. Tobit regression results presented by this study suggest the importance of college size, college status (public vs private), college selectivity, collegiate sports participation, and other factors as being significant determinants of the percent of a university's student body represented by non-resident students. College administrators and government officials are concerned about the economics of college student migration because each additional in-migrating student represents an additional source of revenue (through a higher tuition price), which is especially important because many state universities are currently facing large budget cuts.