The Post-Study Migration of European Economic Area Postgraduates: Who Is Remaining to Work in the United Kingdom?

• In Event: Who Benefits From Assessment in Higher Education?

Abstract

This paper models labour migration of EEA postgraduate students graduated from UK universities. Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education dataset was analysed (2011/12-2016/17) using cross-classified multilevel modelling in order to estimate influences on “stay-rate”: the likelihood of EEA-domiciled graduates remaining in UK for employment. The home domicile and university attended were modelled as random effects that allowed variance in stay-rate to be partitioned between student and higher-levels of domicile and university. Results indicate that gender, subject area, location of university and GDP per capita have significant influence on employment destination of EEA students. Results indicate that home country is a better predictor than HEI attended, and cross-classified model was a better fit to data than simpler two-level models.

Authors

• Meng Zhan, University of Southampton

• Christopher Downey, University of Southampton

• Martin Dyke, University of Southampton