In the Midst of Disasters: Graduate and Undergraduate Tuition Fee Elasticity in Puerto Rico

Abstract

Many studies have found an inverse relationship between tuition fee increases and enrollment. However, there is less literature on the association between increments in the price of higher public education and enrollment when they occur in the midst of disasters associated with hurricanes and pandemics. We selected Puerto Rico as the case study, a US territory that witnessed one of the costliest hurricanes in US history in 2017. We used both aggregate and student-level data for the period 1988–2022. Based on time-series, panel, and duration analyses, we found a negative association between tuition fee increases and enrollment at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, and that disasters exacerbate this association.