Competition amongst same-state Post-Secondary Institutions: Student Pool Dynamics and Specialization through Fields

Post-secondary institutions have historically been recognized to have a heavy connection with the strength of a country’s industries and economic well-being. Within the United States, the competitive environment of the higher education industry, which has had more than 3,900 institutions since 2019, has led many to recognize it through the lens of a market model. While various researchers have conducted studies surrounding the importance and value of the post-secondary education system, how institutions of different sectors and institutional types within the same state compete against one another remains underexamined. Thus, this paper, through empirical analysis of 2006-2024 enrollment and completion data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), investigates whether public and private institutions as well as non-liberal arts and liberal arts institutions in the same state compete for students in the same student pool and whether such institutions attempt to gain a comparative advantage by specializing in specific fields. The findings demonstrate that differences in sector and institutional type are linked to limited competition for the same student pool and that institutions do not specialize in a field of study through increasing the number of graduates of that field. Instead, the results reveal a decreasing trend in graduates of the humanities field in all institutions, suggesting government intervention in maintaining the provision of such programs. This descriptive evidence paves the way for future research.