THE DETERMINANTS OF THE TERTIARY STUDENTS FLOWS INTO EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES. AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS USING PANEL DATA

One of the objectives of the Bologna Process is to promote student mobility by removing learning mobility obstacles. Flexible study paths, full recognition of study achievements, study support and the full portability of grants and loans, among others, are necessary requirements to improve mobility. The number of students from a particular country studying abroad is a first indicator of student mobility. However the outgoing mobility rate should be complemented by the incoming flows which reflect the attractiveness of tertiary education in that particular country. There are many economic and social factors that affect student's decision to move abroad: The possibility to have a scholarships or other grants are important to support learning mobility, personal income, indexes of living level, possibilities to find a job after graduation or language skills among others. Moreover, students decision making in the face of multiple choices for a destination country: quality of the host university, language of use (english -speaking countries or non-english speaking countries), the possibility to get access to the host labour market or personal income of the host country. Therefore, there are several social and economic variables driving the process of mobility flows. In this work we develop econometric panel models to explore the relationship between tertiary student mobility and some available economic variables at European Union country level by using data sets provided by the Statistics Office of the European Communities (Eurostat).