Nearby College Enrollment and Geographical Skills Mismatch: (Re)conceptualizing Student Out-Migration in the American Higher Education System

Student out-migration is a well-studied topic covering more than 40 years of research. This literature has typically equated student out-migration to out-of-state enrollment and has classified all college attendance taking place in students’ state of residence as in-state enrollment. This study argues that failing to capture students’ out-migration within their states of residence may overestimate the positive returns of “out-migrating” by underestimating the effect of attending college “in state.” Accordingly, the purpose of the study was 2-fold. First, it relied on geographical network analysis to offer a framework that disaggregated the sole measure of in-state enrollment into (a) nearby college enrollment and (b) within-state out-migration. Second, it tested the impact of these newly proposed conceptualizations of students’ out-migration decisions on educational and financial outcomes. With the use of the Education Longitudinal Study (2002:12) and other individual-, institution-, geographic-, and state-level indicators, findings indicated that the typical in-state versus out-of-state definition exaggerates the assumed benefits of “migrating.” Indeed, within-state out-migrants attained similar academic and salary-based results while incurring significantly lower undergraduate loan debt compared with students who out-migrated out of state. The study offers evidence of geographical skills mismatch associated with students’ worsened outcomes when enrolling in their 5 closest options and offers a framework to minimize such a mismatch.