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Understanding US college graduate migration

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Abstract

Previous research has shown that understanding the migration habits of college graduates is important because there is evidence of a link between human capital, proxied by an educated workforce, and economic growth. While a number of papers have investigated the motivations for migration by college graduates in other countries or between US regions, few studies have examined US college graduate migration at the regional level or used individual-level data. To help understand the post-graduation location decisions of recent US college graduates, we surveyed graduates of California State University, Long Beach, a large, state-supported university in the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area. Long Beach, despite being the home to this large university, lags the region in numbers of college-educated residents. The region has also experienced substantial economic restructuring. The results suggest that amenities play a strong role in where graduates choose to locate and that cities should do more to build connections with students in order to retain their talents post-graduation.

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Notes

  1. Data were pulled from the CSULB Institutional Research Web site, http://www.csulb.edu/institutional-research-assessment/beach-data/common-data-set.

  2. Based on estimates from the 2011–2015 American Community Survey by the US Census.

  3. Based on estimates from the 2012–2016 American Community Survey by the US Census.

  4. IRB rules required that we make any question optional.

  5. For example, in the 2009–2010 academic year, 8750 students graduated from CSULB. http://web.csulb.edu/divisions/students/uosr/Publications/PDF/distinctions.pdf.

  6. Unfortunately, limited detail was available for the overall surveyed or graduate population. Thus, we had to rely on the data that were available.

  7. While there are differences between the choices themselves, such as their distance to Long Beach, our method does control for this because for some choices, such as “the rest of California,” there are many distances depending on exactly where they live. We recognize this is a limitation of our research.

  8. For more information on the multinomial logit approach, see Wooldridge (2010).

  9. Marginal effects for indicator or dummy variables are based on discrete differences rather than derivatives.

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Acknowledgements

Thank you to three reviewers and participants at the North American Regional Science Council and the Southern Regional Science Association conferences and seminar participants at Jinan University, Guangzhou, PRC, for helpful comments. Special thanks go to Annette Kunitsa for her research assistance. Funding for this research was partially provided by an Early Career grant from the Regional Studies Association, and the survey was conducted while the author was at California State University, Long Beach.

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  1. Resource Economics and Management, West Virginia University, P.O. Box 6108, Morgantown, WV, 26506-6108, USA

    Heather M. Stephens

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  1. Heather M. Stephens
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Correspondence to Heather M. Stephens.

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Appendix 1: Survey instrument

Appendix 1: Survey instrument

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Stephens, H.M. Understanding US college graduate migration. J Geogr Syst 21, 509–531 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10109-019-00310-5

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