부산대학교 도서관

Regional cohesion and competition for students has fostered interest in the decision-making process behind the selection of higher education institution. We use a gravity model approach to estimate the impact of socio-economic profile of districts and characteristics of higher education institutions on the migratory flows of candidates to undergraduate programmes in Portugal. Elasticity to distance is found to be negative, in line with the literature . The characteristics of the district of destination are unimportant, contrasting with the characteristics of institutions: a measure of propensity to unemployment among graduates is associated with smaller incoming flows, the number of vacancies is associated with a more than proportional positive impact on flows, and universities are shown to attract more students than polytechnics. Regarding the district of origin, the greater the local supply of higher education, the lower the outgoing flows, and the larger the young population, the higher the outgoing flows.