College classes seem to mimic Tiebout’s explanation of neighborhoods, in a way. Just as local government public goods provisions are given and the entity that adjusts is consumer-voters, class rules, policies, and topics are given and students must pick between them. Just as with realistic neighborhoods, Tiebout’s assumptions do not hold up perfectly when applied to the world of college classes. Perfect mobility ends with the add/drop deadline and may never exist at all given that some classes require prerequisites or approval to get into. Perfect information is helped by sites such as Course Forum, but one doesn’t know exactly what the assignments and professor will be like, even after reading the syllabus. There is a relatively large set of class choices, but availability depends on one’s enrollment time. “Job constraints” in this context translate to one’s required major classes, which of course constrain choices. In terms of externalities, I would argue that classes absolutely affect each other in terms of how the room is left and how much energy/time students have left to devote to other classes. However, optimal n* class size definitely holds up and professors make attempts to reach this size by setting a cap and may even promote their class to arrive at n* students.
Despite these imperfect assumptions, we can learn something from the application of Tiebout’s model to classes. It makes the case for “local” decisions. By letting departments/professors design their own courses students are left with a market of choices from which to choose from, as opposed to administration mandating all classes to be offered. With this system students are able to choose their optimal revenue-expenditure patterns (how much work a class requires and what one can learn from it).
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