A Factorial Model for Studying the Dynamics of International Student Mobility

There are several international institutions interested in monitoring and analysing the dynamics in transnational high education systems. UNESCO and OECD are working with member countries to improve the quality of internationally available data on mobility of students and academics. However, enrolment or country of origin statistics aren't able to explain the student migration phenomenon or to reason why some nations are just "more mobile" than others. Our paper proposes a differing perspective, employing factor analysis methods in order to study the profile of the top ten most active countries of origin in the last five years. Therefore, we will try to identify the factors that determine student migration, focusing on digesting and correlating endogenous and exogenous variables.