University graduate migration in Finland

Abstract

A high level of human capital is considered as an essential precondition for economic performance and regional competitiveness. However, university regions do not always manage to take advantage of the full potential of local higher education, as they are not always able to retain university students after graduation. Previous studies have presented remarkable regional differences concerning the share of graduates who remain in their university region after graduation. Hence, this paper has focused on geographical distribution and inter-regional mobility of university graduates in Finland. Long-term migration behaviour of all university graduates who completed their master’s or equivalent degree in 2000–2015 was analysed using geographic information systems (GIS). The main finding of the paper is that university graduates in Finland are rather immobile, as the most active mobility takes places when transitioning from university to their first job. After that, the geographical distribution of the graduates is rather stable, which contradicts the general assumption of high mobility of university-educated people. Further, the migration flows are directed mainly towards the four largest city regions of the country, especially to the capital city region. Cross-migration between city regions with similar population sizes and population growth rate is marginal, and it seems that the difference in the population size and growth between the graduation region and the destination region has to be large enough to exceed the threshold for migration. Retaining university graduates seems to be especially challenging for the smallest and declining university regions.