Students’ university mobility patterns in Europe: an introduction

Abstract

This thematic series collects some papers on Italian students' mobility. The aim of this thematic series is twofold. First, to describe the phenomenon which is important for universities and for its negative socio-economic implications for the South of Italy. Second, to propose new applications of statistical methods for this topic and applications which can be extended to other forms of migration, too.

The high school effect on students’ mobility choices

“…According to the literature, the divergences in students' educational choices can be related to two theoretical paradigms: investment and consumption theories (Attanasio 2022;Foot and Pervin 1983). According to the former, individuals' education choices depend on comparing the expected returns of education and its expected costs, which are functions of both tangible and intangible assets.…”

“…Meanwhile, according to the consumption theory, the demand for education follows the conventional economic theory, and it depends on the interplay between students' preferences and income, education's relative price and universities' characteristics (Krezel and Krezel 2017). Recent findings provided by Rizzi et al (2021) suggest that in Italy the mobility of northern first-year students toward cities such as Milan and Turin is mainly driven by the investment perspective; nevertheless, as highlighted by Attanasio (2022), the Italian framework is characterized by an almost unidirectional flow toward the main northern cities that are also those that can provide students with higher standards in terms of services, infrastructures, leisure activities and opportunities. Indeed, these peculiarities would suggest an intersection of the two perspectives behind students' mobility choices.…”