Does distance determine who attends a university in Germany?

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in Does Distance Determine Who Attends a University in Germany?C. Katharina Spiess Katharina Wrohlich The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post World Net. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. We analyze the role of distance from a university in the decision to attend higher education in Germany. Students who live near a university can avoid moving and the increased living expenses by commuting. Thus, transaction cost arguments would suggest that the greater the distance to the nearest university, the lower the participation in higher education. We analyze this hypothesis by combining data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) with a database from the German Rectors' Conference on university postal codes. Based on a discrete time hazard rate model we show that distance to the next university at the time of completing high school significantly affects the decision to enrol in tertiary education. Controlling for many other socio-economic and regional variables, we find that 1 kilometre distance decreases the probability to enrol in higher education by 0.2-0.3 percentage points.JEL Classification: I2, R1

How University Websites’ Emphasis on Age Diversity Influences Prospective Students’ Perception of Person-Organization Fit and Student Recruitment

“…The role of instrumental concerns in students' enrollment decisions is widely documented. Research on the effects of institutional characteristics shows, for instance, that factors pertaining directly to instrumental considerations such as the quality or prestige of academic programs (Perry and Rumpf 1984;Stein et al 2011), job and income expectations (Silvester et al 2014), geographical distance (Kjellström 1999;Spiess and Wrohlich 2010), or the availability of financial aid (DesJardins et al 2006) critically influences enrollment decisions. The influence of social identity concerns as a factor driving students' enrollment, on the other hand, has received less empirical attention.…”

Peer Group and Distance: When Widening University Participation is Better

“…The effect of geographical distance on higher university participation has been empirically confirmed by Card (), Do (), Griffith and Rothstein () and Koedel () for the USA, Frenette (, ) and () for Canada, Sá et al . () for the Netherlands, Gibbons and Vignoles (, ) and Kenyon () for the UK, Spiess and Wrohlich () for Germany.…”

Going the distance: The effects of university – secondary school collaboration on student migration

“…The distance between students' homes and universities or colleges is a central determinant that explains participation in higher education and patterns of student migration at the transition from secondary to higher education (Sá et al ; Spiess and Wrohlich ; Denzler and Wolter ). Studies in education economics consistently show that, ceteris paribus, distance to the nearest HEI negatively affects the degree of participation or choice of university programmes.…”

“…So larger distances between two educational institutions result in smaller student flows between the two institutions (Sá et al ). The negative effect of distance on student migration has been labeled as the distance barrier (Spiess and Wrohlich ) or the deterrence effect of distance (Sá et al ) and there is a variety of studies providing evidence for such a deterrence effect on student migration in different countries (Sá et al , ; Alm and Winters ; Dal Bianco et al ; Denzler and Wolter ). In addition, Denzler and Wolter () show that distance also has a negative effect on the probability of choosing a specific subject as is the case with often highly specialized programmes in science and engineering.…”