The Retention of Graduate Human Capital:

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• The Retention of Graduate Human Capital
• An Analysis of Graduate Migration Flows
• in and out of Scotland
• by
• Alessandra Faggian
• University of Southampton
• Cher Li
• Robert E. Wright
• University of Strathclyde
• ERSA Conference, Liverpool, Aug. 2008

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• Introduction
• One of our objectives is to quantify the nature
  of graduate labour market flows between the
  countries and regions of GB
• Why bother?
• Not a great deal is known about this.
• Regional focus Scotland, England and Wales
• export and import of graduates equally
  interesting as the export and import of goods and
  services
• Information along these lines will be fed into
  the CGE analysis

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• Policy Relevance
• Concern with depopulation of rural and remote
  regions of Scotland
• Migration flows of students and graduate thought
  to reinforce migration flows of general
  population (north and west to the east)
• Belief that building Higher and Further
  Education institutions in rural and remote
  regions will help reverse these trends

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Data

• HESA (Higher Education Statistical Agency) is the
  official agency for the collection, analysis and
  dissemination of quantitative information about
  higher education in the UK.
• We use two datasets
• (1) Destinations of leavers from HEIs (DLHE)
• (2) Students in HEIs
• 12 waves available from 1994/95 to 2005/2006
• For current analysis, we focus on the most recent
  wave (05/06) which includes information on around
  2.4 million students and around 230,000 graduates.

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A Brief Picture of HEIs in Scotland
20 HEIs 8 pre-92 Universities, 6 post-92
Universities and 7 Colleges (mainly clustered
around Glasgow and Edinburgh) Total number of
students in 05/06 215, 820 Number of students
went up by 44.9 between 94/95 and 05/06 (c.f.
national average 49.1 England 48.7).
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Figure 1 students per 1,000 population, by
countries, 1994/95-2005/06
Scotland
UK average
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Some descriptives
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• The HESA data provide three key postal addresses
• Place of domicile
• Place of study
• Place of employment
• This allows us to identify 3 migration types

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Stayers, Interregional Movers V.S. Leavers
Two different movements studied here
2. MEDIUM DISTANCE movements (interregional but
within country) interregional re-allocation of
skilled labour

• LONG DISTANCE movements (inter-country within GB)
  brain drain or brain gain?

Leavers (L)
Interregional movers (I)
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Breakdown of Migration Type for Scotland and the
Rest of GB
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Model 2
Model 1
Stayers
Leavers (Scottish IN-migration)
Interregional Mover
Interregional Mover
Stayers
Leavers (Scottish OUT-migration)
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• We model both OUT-flows (Model 1) and IN-flows
  (Model 2) of graduates from and to Scotland using
  a Multinomial Logit Model to identify both
  problems of
• Retention of graduates within Scotland
• (Model 1 stayers and interregional migrants)
• Attraction of graduates from outside Scotland
  (Model 2 leavers from England and Wales)

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MULTINOMIAL LOGIT MODELLING
jLeavers,Interregional Migrant, Stayer (base
category) qindividual identifier
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Estimation Results (Model 1)
significant at 1 level, significant at 5
level, significant at 10 level
significant at 1 level, significant at 5
level, significant at 10 level
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Plots of Odds Ratios and Discrete Change
Coefficients (Model 1)
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Plots of Odds Ratios and Discrete Change
Coefficients (Model 1), cont
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Estimation Results (Model 2)
significant at 1 level, significant at 5
level, significant at 10 level
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Estimation Results (Model 2, cont)
significant at 1 level, significant at 5
level, significant at 10 level
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Plots of Odds Ratios and Discrete Change
Coefficients (Model 2)
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Plots of Odds Ratios and Discrete Change
Coefficients (Model 2), cont
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Conclusions and Future Work

• Preliminary Conclusions
• Scotland is a net-loser of graduates in
  absolute terms, but vis-à-vis elsewhere in GB, it
  attracts the largest of high-quality graduates
• Determinants of leavers similar from and to
  Scotland male(), age(-), Asian(-),
  postgraduate(), 1st/2.1(), science(),
  combined(), ex-polytech(-), college(-), and
  regional effects
• Regional retention of human capital crucial
  high-mobility graduates are of best quality

• Future work
• To incorporate more variables on regional
  characteristics, e.g. quality of life,
  social/economic environment
• To use more disaggregated regions for analysis of
  England/Wales, e.g. NUTS2
• Check for consistency of results over time and/or
  time trends by incorporating longer time series
  in the analysis

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Thanks for your attention!

• For more details on this project, see
• http//ewds.strath.ac.uk/iheirei/Home.aspx
• Or email Cher.Li_at_strath.ac.uk