When Studying Means Leaving: How Distance to Higher Educational Institutions Shapes Academic Aspirations in Peripheral France

Marine Haddad , French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED)

Using fine-grained administrative data on French prospective higher-education students, this paper investigates the links between the geographical distribution of higher education institutions and the type of programs students apply to. While most research on students’ regional migration looks at actual migration behaviors, this paper adopts a novel approach. It incorporates measures of exposition to higher education institutions (combining the diversity, selectivity, and attractiveness of the programs with their geographical distance to the candidate) and assesses how they are associated to prospective students’ academic aspirations, as measured by their rate of acceptance, that is to say the proportions of programs to which they are admitted among their applications. While rates of acceptance reflect students’ academic performances, results confirm that this measure also capture the extent to which they allow themselves to aim for more selective programs. Controlling for students’ educational and socioeconomic background, this paper highlights the weight of geographical disparities in the higher education supply and suggest that distance does drive students to limit their aspirations.

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 Presented in Session P3. Migration, Economics, Policies, History