Migration has been studied from an economic and geographical perspective, ignoring social factors such as education. Internal educational migration is a phenomenon driven by the search for better quality education and job opportunities.
Internal educational migration has both individual and collective implications. Individually, students face social, political and economic challenges. Collectively, educational migration can contribute to “brain drain”, where less advantaged regions lose their most skilled individuals in search of better opportunities, but this process also poses significant challenges for both individuals and regions of origin and destination.
This paper seeks to analyze how internal university educational migration has been studied through a review of 119 sources that consider issues related to migration, internal educational and university migration, trajectories and students.
University internal educational migration in Latin America, and especially in Colombia, is a phenomenon driven by the search for better educational quality and job opportunities.
This phenomenon is related to the inefficient allocation of academic programs, the search for prestigious institutions and the poor coverage of higher education. There are very few studies that analyze factors such as the migratory trajectories of students who change cities to pursue higher education, which have been little studied in Latin America and especially in Colombia. It is crucial that more studies are conducted to fully understand the dynamics and consequences of intra-university educational migration and how it relates to economic, social, educational and cultural factors of students and their families, making it a likely source of research for new studies in higher education, in order to formulate policies that mitigate its negative effects and promote equitable development throughout the country.
