University pathways of urban and rural migration in Iceland

Abstract

Low levels of education have serious social, economic and cultural ramifications in rural areas. In many countries, regional universities have explicitly been built to educate the local population, create professional jobs and stimulate innovation. More recently, distance education has been developed to provide university education in rural regions and diminish brain drain towards urban centres. In this study, the pathways of Icelandic university graduates are traced from place of origin to residence five years after graduation. An overwhelming majority of local students at the national University of Iceland (UI) remain in the Reykjavík Capital Area after graduation, while others mostly emigrate abroad. Only about one in three UI students from regions beyond commuting distance return after graduation, while about half remain in the capital area and others mostly emigrate. The regional University of Akureyri (UNAK) in Northern Iceland is relatively successful in retaining graduates from North Central region, but on-campus students from regions beyond commuting distance from UNAK are no more likely to return after graduation than their UI counterparts. In sharp contrast, about three in four UNAK distance students remain in their region of origin after graduation. While regional universities may primarily strengthen regional centres, distance education has the potential to enhance educational levels in more distant exurban, micropolitan and rural areas.

Return to the countryside: The return intentions of highly educated young people in the Akmola province of northern Kazakhstan

“…2 Distance education courses may be even more effective in diminishing brain drain towards urban centres, see, for example, Bjarnason and Edvardsson (2017) for an overview. 3 We thank one of the referees for pointing this out.…”

“…One such option is to set up colleges and universities or other institutions of higher education in rural regions. These institutions are explicitly built to create attractive rural jobs in academia and stimulate regional innovation and, thus, more jobs (Bjarnason & Edvardsson, 2017). They may also serve to keep rural students in touch with their rural area of origin and/or their social surroundings and, thus, to break the "migrating-to-learn/learning-to-migrate" chain (Haapanen & Tervo, 2012;Li et al, 1996;Pedersen & Gram, 2018;Venhorst, Van Dijk, & Van Wissen, 2010).…”

“…As mentioned earlier, students with an urban origin also have the potential to counterbalance the rural brain drain. However, research shows that they rarely move to rural areas, see, for example, De Vries and Reid () or Bjarnason and Edvardsson (). Therefore, we explicitly focus on graduates from a rural place of origin.…”

An analysis of technical efficiency in Icelandic dairy and sheep farms

“…Furthermore, farms are not as competitive as retail firms, with relatively few farms reaching levels of technical and allocative efficiency due to the fact that they are not able to implement competitive management strategies owing to their small size and the low level of investment in costly labour-and time-saving innovative technologies (Seyfrit et al, 2010). In order to reduce the skills and knowledge gap in rural areas, various on-line courses have been proposed by different universities with the core purpose of increasing skills and competence and, conversely, reducing the levels of permanent emigration from, and poverty in, rural villages (Bjarnason and Edvardsson, 2017;Seyfrit et al, 2010).…”

“…The most recent FAO statistical data reported in literature show that more than 70% of Iceland's land area is unproductive, and only around 4,000 people are engaged full-time in farming (Bjarnason and Edvardsson, 2017), although there are many who are part-time farmers, working predominantly in other economic sectors.…”