THE PUBLIC CHOICE OF NON-RESIDENT COLLEGE TUITION LEVELS

This paper uses a public choice framework to analyze the choice of tui tion levels charged by public institutions to non-resident students. I t finds that a state's relative strength in attracting both population and students lead to higher tuitions and that large numbers of privat e colleges and perhaps lack of job openings lead to higher tuition for non-residents as do small fiscal gains from high income newcomers. No support is found for the hypotheses that high enrollment growth or co sts lead to relatively poor treatment of out-of-staters.