Enrolling in Higher Education: The Impact of Regional Mobility and Public-Private Substitution Effects

In this article, we study the enrollment decision of candidates to Portuguese public Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). We classify candidates according to their revealed preference for regional mobility and measure the impact of their mobility status on the likelihood of enrollment. For instance, candidates succeeding to be placed in their home district are about fourteen percentage points more likely to enroll than those pushed away. We also show that distance deters enrollments, even for candidates that reveal a preference for migrating. Finally, we measure the impact of the availability of private sector alternatives in the home district on the likelihood of enrollment and show that their existence reduces the likelihood of enrollment by up to nine percentage points.