“…Accordingly, several empirical studies are able to show how the main driver of students' choice of university is to be searched in the local socio-economic characteristics of origin and destination, especially in terms of labor market conditions (Croce and Ghignoni, 2011;D'Agostino et al, 2019). Students want to anticipate the job market, moving soon towards those places able to give them better chances of being collocatated on a suitable employment, in many cases facing several 'settling costs' from economic, psychological, and social points of view (D'Agostino et al, 2021). They seem also very interested in the competencies they are going to acquire, showing high selectivity in their choice of the educational curricula (Columbu et al, 2021) Thus, students are not attracted by departments providing on average a higher level of grades.…”