Tracing diversity in communities to student migration: The role of institutional prestige and environmental quality


Ebenezer Narh, Western University

Like other forms of population migration, higher education student migration (HESM) redistributes young adults with diverse backgrounds and alters the demographic composition of communities (Liaw and Rogers, 1999). By and large HESM leads to population heterogeneity, especially in terms of socio-cultural origins. For instance, recent research documents the relocation of French and English-speaking students across Canadian provinces (Narh and Buzzelli, 2022). Evidence suggests that university prestige increases its attractiveness, and in turn increases the volume of student migration flows (Abbot and Schmid, 1975). And since universities are not entirely ‘city-less’ (Brockliss, 2000), their prestige may impact the locations in which they are situated. In this research, we use a quantitative approach to examine the influences of university prestige and environmental quality in shaping the student body and populations of 17 Canadian census metropolitan areas (CMAs) hosting at least one university. The research comprises enrolled domestic undergraduate and graduate students in Canadian public higher education institutions (HEIs). The primary data for the study is the Postsecondary Student Information System (PSIS) which contains students programme information, residential postal codes (region of origin) and postal codes of HEIs (region of destination) as well as their demographic information. Statistics Canada creates the PSIS dataset from administrative data provided by HEIs across the country. After the data cleaning and inspection, migration flow matrixes were generated through crosstabulations of students’ places of origin and study destinations. The migration volumes were split by gender (i.e., male and female) and field of study (i.e., STEM and non-STEM) to compute the flows in each grouping. The resulting PSIS output (n= 1088) is linked to supplementary data such as university ranking, unemployment rate and environment quality for the analysis. Gravity model analysis shows that CMAs with high environmental quality and university prestige are attractive to migrant students, however these factors do not diminish the importance of students’ gender and preference for specific fields of study in the migration process. This research highlights the potential role of university prestige in attracting students who migrate for higher education studies and contributes to our understanding of the importance of location attributes in driving HESM. Communities may leverage diversity in talent, labour pool and populations to innovate. Hence, the paper concludes with a discussion of policy implications for the influence of HESM on community demographic make-up and local labour markets, as well as the significant role of university prestige and environmental quality in student attraction and retention.

Non-presenting author: Michael Buzzelli, University of Ottawa

This paper will be presented at the following session: