Education and Business CyclesThe Case Study of Distance Education in Boom and Depression

Today, in planning around university administration, in addition to many issues, there is a need to estimate the demand for higher education in the coming years. Among the factors influencing the demand for higher education are economic conditions and variables. Prosperity and recession are among these conditions that have not been addressed in studies conducted in Iran.Education can be influenced by business cycles for many reasons. Prosperity and recession periods increase a person's motivation to grow specialized skills, on one hand, and due to the right business conditions and the rising opportunity costs,Encounter with more costs to assign time for the education on the other hand ; therefore it can decrease the motivation of education. The purpose of this article is to investigate the effect of boom and bust periods on the enrollment rate of Payame Noor University in the country during the years 2005-2015. Accordingly, the combined data method based on provincial data has been used. The results of the article show that the share of Payame Noor University students to the total number of students in the provinces of the country during the boom periods has decreased and in contrast, this share is positive during the recession periods. The results also show that the intensity of impact in periods of boom and bust is relatively low and very low. Therefore, it can be stated that the enrollment rate in Payame Noor University has anti-cyclical behavior. These results confirm that people are affected by their cost at the time of enrollment in this university. The results of this article can help university management what policies to adopt in times of prosperity or recession. In previous studies, the effect of economic growth on the enrollment rate has been mainly considered, while in this article, the effect of general economic fluctuations in the form of boom and bust periods has been discussed.