TY  - JOUR
AU  - Deming, David J
AU  - Lovenheim, Michael
AU  - Patterson, Richard W
TI  - The Competitive Effects of Online Education
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 22749
PY  - 2016
Y2  - October 2016
DO  - 10.3386/w22749
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w22749
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w22749.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David J. Deming
Harvard Kennedy School
Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy
79 JFK St
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/496-4702
E-Mail: david_deming@harvard.edu

Michael F. Lovenheim
Department of Policy Analysis and Management
ILR School, and Department of Economics
Cornell University
264 Ives Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
Tel: 607/255-0705
Fax: 607/255-4071
E-Mail: mfl55@cornell.edu

Richard W. Patterson
United States Military Academy
B107 Lincoln Hall
West Point, NY 10996
E-Mail: richard.patterson@westpoint.edu
M1  - published as David J. Deming, Michael Lovenheim, Richard Patterson. "The Competitive Effects of Online Education," in Caroline M. Hoxby and Kevin Stange, editors, "Productivity in Higher Education" University of Chicago Press (2019)

M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2017-01-09
AB  - We study the impact of online degree programs on the market for U.S. higher education. Online degree programs increase the competitiveness of local education markets by providing additional options in areas that previously only had a small number of brick-and-mortar schools. We show that local postsecondary institutions in less competitive markets experienced relative enrollment declines following a regulatory change in 2006 that increased the market entry and enrollment of online institutions. Impacts on enrollment were concentrated among private non-selective institutions, which are likely to be the closest competitors to online degree programs. We also find increases in per-student instructional spending among public institutions. Our results suggest that by increasing competitive pressure on local schools, online education can be an important driver of innovation and productivity in U.S. higher education.
ER  -