Microeconomic Analysis of UC Davis's Honors Program

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The honors program is well-respected in the community of UC Davis. With only a small percentage of students enrolled in the program, the benefits and assets for the program are a limited resource exclusively for these individuals. Most people see the academic facade of the program without examining the program through a microeconomic viewpoint. A critical way to determine whether the program is efficient is by looking at its supply and demand, opportunity cost, and benefits. Arguably, one of the most important things to a college student is the registration time given to them for choosing their classes. As an honors student, you get the privilege of priority registration in which you get first pick on classes you’d like to add to your schedule. Looking at this scenario in a supply and demand perspective, the demand for classes at UC Davis is considerably high because of an immense amount of prerequisite and core classes demanded by students. With a supply being limited to a strict number of seats offered to students, demand …show more content…

For example, the opportunity cost of being an honor student is the choice of being a non-honors student. As a non-honors student you are not required to take any honors courses at all, meaning you have space in your schedule to get started on prerequisites. Honors classes are required for honors students to pick, but are not demanded by all the students as there are some classes that are not suitable to a student’s certain major. This can be seen as a deadweight loss that occurs from an inefficient allocation of classes distributed. While some students are better off as they might find classes that benefit them, other honors students are forced to choose from a list of classes that might not interest them at all. A policy to improve this situation would be to offer more classes that encompass a wider variety of classes for

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