70% of graduates leave their student city

It seems that the university cities cannot keep their graduates. 70% of students leave their student city with a diploma in their hand. This is one of the conclusions in the thesis of Viktor Venhorst, an economist and demographer at the University of Groningen. Cities would like the graduates to stay, because of the positive influence they have on the region.

Despite the high migration of graduates, 30% of former students decide to nevertheless stay in the city after graduation, while only 5-10% of the students have already been living in the city before they started studying. The conclusion: the number of alumni staying in the university cities grows each year. This has a positive impact on the region, because people with higher education provide a greater range of scientific jobs.

The investigation shows that some former students are not as mobile as previously thought. The so-called “sticky” effect is much stronger than expected. If people come from a city and study there, it is more likely that they stay there after graduation. The reverse is also true: if a student has moved to a city to study, there is a good chance that the student will move again after graduation.

According to Venhorst, mobile graduates often have better quality jobs.  He doesn’t attribute chances of getting a better job to the mobility per se, but also to personality traits, such as internal motivation.