Abstract for: Why is college tuition rising? Modelling competing strategies in higher education

College tuition has been increasing continuously over the past decades, outpacing inflation by a large margin. This has raised serious concerns as the education system is facing an overgrowing debt problem along with dissatisfaction in student population. The growth in enrollment numbers is becoming more and more limited, causing the higher education business to become more competitive than ever, with leader universities attracting students away from smaller colleges. Considering that business dynamics in higher education systems are complex as there is not a clear relationship between the price of education—tuition, and its demand—Enrollment, we try to get a better understanding of the puzzle of growing tuition using system dynamics. By representing competition in a simplistic double university model, it is shown that universities are gravitated toward increasing tuitions to survive and grow in the current environment.