Field-of-study-choice in higher education: does distance matter?

When field-of-study options vary across higher education institutions, geographical distances may create barriers to students’ study choices. Based on this hypothesis, the present study empirically examines field-of-study decisions in Finland’s university system, focusing on the effect of distance. The results of the conditional logit models suggest that a 100-kilometre increase in the shortest distance to enrol in a field is, on average, associated with an approximately 15% reduction in the likelihood of selecting that field. However, the effect of distance varies, to some extent, across the choice alternatives and is insignificant when choosing education, arts or medicine, while large and significant in most other cases.

Julkaisun tiedot

Suhonen, T. (2014), Field-of-study-choice in higher education: does distance matter? Spatial Economic Analysis, 9(4): 349–354.

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