Geography, choice and participation in higher education in England

Geographical distance between parental home and college poses a potential barrier to higher education entry, and could be a deciding factor when choosing between institutions. Low income and ethnic minority groups are often considered to be especially constrained in their education choices because they need to stay at home for financial or cultural reasons. This paper provides new quantitative evidence on these issues from England. It improves on previous studies by using a large administrative data set on a population of school leavers and by using methods that allow for great flexibility in the way that student characteristics might influence choices. Our findings are that geographical distance has little or no impact on the decision to participate in England, but has a strong influence on institutional choice. Institution attendance probabilities fall with distance from home, with an elasticity of − 1. Small, but potentially important differences between student groups have implications for the sorting of students across institutions, and hence the spatial distribution of human capital.

► The distance a pupil lives from their nearest university has little effect on the likelihood that they go to university.
► For pupils of all ethnic and income groups distance from their nearest university does not impact on participation.
► If a student does decide to go to university, their choice of institution is influenced by how far away they live from it.
► The elasticity of attendance with respect to distance is approx minus 1, similar to that found in other types of migration.
► We control for pupil heterogeneity and residential sorting using administrative data and flexible discrete choice methods.