Are Universities Important for Explaining Unequal Participation in Student Mobility? A Comparison between Germany, Hungary, Italy and the UK

Abstract

Policies supporting international student mobility prepare young people for the challengesof global and multicultural environments. However, disadvantaged students have lowerparticipation rates in mobility schemes, and hence benefit less from their positive impactson career progression. Therefore, policy makers aim to make mobility programmesmore inclusive. Nevertheless, it is far from clear how policy design can achieve this aim.This study investigates factors driving unequal mobility uptake. It goes beyond existingresearch by not only focusing on individual choices but also on university characteristics,like university segregation, excellence and student support. In addition, the study is novelin comparing rich graduate survey and administrative data merged with university levelETER data across four countries. Multilevel regression results show consistently across allcountries that disadvantaged students do not only lose out on mobility experience due totheir background but also due to them being clustered in universities with lower mobilityopportunities. Universities' support and excellence while important for explaining mobilityuptake do not appear to mitigate unequal uptake in any of the countries examined.

Keywords: Germany, Hungary, university excellence, international student mobility, Erasmus+, inequality, unequal uptake, segregation, student support, Italy, UK

JEL Classification: I23, I24, D63, D02