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ABSTRACT
University spatial competition for students: the Italian case. Regional Studies. The ability to attract students has become crucial for the sustainability of universities, especially in Southern Europe, where the decrease of governmental funding has been dramatic following the financial crisis. By using a competing destinations model on the student flows to 75 Italian universities in the period 2003–12, and modelling university competition with respect to different market segmentations, the paper provides evidence that Italian universities operated under competition forces in the last decade. Results hold when controlling for universities’ educational offer, trying different definitions of university attractiveness, excluding private academic institutions and limiting the analysis to non-selective courses.
摘要
大学招生的空间竞争：意大利的案例. Regional Studies. 招生的能力，已成为大学可持续性的关键，特别是对金融危机之后政府补助大幅减少的南欧而言。本文对2003年至2012年间进入七十五间意大利大学的学生流施以竞争目的地模型，并模式化不同市场部门的城市竞争，以提供证据显示，意大利的大学在过去十年当中，是在竞争的驱力之下进行营运。当控制大学的教育供给，尝试不同的大学吸引力之定义，排除私人学术机构，且将分析限定于非选择性课程时，研究结果仍然有效。
RÉSUMÉ
La concurrence géographique universitaire pour le recrutement d’étudiants: étude de cas de l'Italie. Regional Studies. La capacité de recruter des étudiants est devenue indispensable à la pérennité des universités, notamment dans l'Europe méridionale, où la baisse des subventions gouvernementales s'est avérée spectaculaire suite à la crise financière. En employant un modèle dit des destinations concurrentes auprès des flux d’étudiants à destination de 75 universités situées en Italie pour la période allant de 2003 jusqu’à 2012, et en modélisant la concurrence universitaire en ce qui concerne des segmentations différentes du marché, l'article fournit des preuves de la force de la concurrence sous lasquelle les universités en Italie ont fonctionné pendant la dernière décennie. En tenant compte de l'offre éducative des universités, en appliquant diverses définitions de leur attractivité, en excluant les établissements universitaires privés et en limitant l'analyse à l'accès à des programmes d’études non sélectifs, les résultats restent toujours valables.
ZUSAMMENFASSUNG
Räumlicher Wettbewerb zwischen Hochschulen für Studenten: der Fall Italien. Regional Studies. Für das Überleben von Hochschulen ist die Fähigkeit zur Anwerbung von Studenten insbesondere in Südeuropa, wo die staatlichen Subventionen nach der Finanzkrise drastisch gekürzt wurden, von zentraler Bedeutung. Durch Verwendung eines konkurrierenden Zielmodells für die Studentenströme zu 75 italienischen Hochschulen im Zeitraum von 2003 bis 2012 und durch Modellierung des Wettbewerbs zwischen Hochschulen im Hinblick auf verschiedene Marktsegmentierungen werden in diesem Beitrag Belege dafür geliefert, dass italienische Hochschulen im letzten Jahrzehnt den Kräften des Wettbewerbs ausgesetzt waren. Die Ergebnisse halten auch einer Kontrolle auf das Bildungsangebot der Hochschulen, der versuchsweisen Verwendung verschiedener Definitionen für die Attraktivität von Hochschulen, dem Ausschluss von privaten akademischen Institutionen und einer Begrenzung der Analyse auf nicht selektive Kurse stand.
RESUMEN
Competencia espacial entre universidades para estudiantes: el caso italiano. Regional Studies. Para la sostenibilidad de las universidades, especialmente al sur de Europa, donde la reducción de los fondos gubernamentales ha sido drástica tras la crisis financiera, la capacidad de atraer a estudiantes constituye un factor decisivo. Utilizando un modelo de destinos competitivos para los flujos de estudiantes en 75 universidades italianas durante el periodo de 2003 a 2012, y modelando la competencia universitaria con respecto a los diferentes segmentos del mercado, en este artículo demostramos que en los últimos diez años las universidades italianas han funcionado bajo fuerzas competitivas. Los resultados siguen siendo contundentes cuando se controla la oferta educativa de las universidades, se intentan diferentes definiciones del poder de atracción de la universidad, se excluyen las instituciones académicas privadas y se limita el análisis a cursos no selectivos.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors are grateful to David Audretsch, Andrea Bonaccorsi, Giuseppe Catalano, Cinzia Daraio, Chiara Franzoni, Hugo Horta, Simona Iammarino, Winters John, Gianmaria Martini, Francesco Quatraro, Marco Seeber, Santos Silva, Stefano Usai, Manule Heitor Valsassina and Chun Yongwan, as well as the editors and three anonymous referees, for extremely helpful comments. They also thank the participants at the 60th Annual North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International in Atlanta, Georgia, 2013; the 25th AiIG conference, 2014; and the Geography of Innovation in Utrecht, the Netherlands, 2014.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
SUPPLEMENTAL DATA
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2015.1135240
Notes
1. The spatial component also contributes to the evolution of the market, influencing the actions of universities as a reaction to the transformation in attractiveness of local competitors.
2. Although in the model the origin is a province, among the socio-economic characteristic of the province, there is the attractiveness of its university system (university presence, and universities’ attractiveness index).
3. Although in the model the destination is a university, among the characteristics determining a university's attractiveness some features are related to the province context (the population of university students, value added per capita, average quality of life, and number of scholarships per student).
4. In the research design, the unit of observation is the flow of students from a certain province to a certain university rather than the individual choice.
5. By Law 240/2010 an organizational structure composed by two internal units, namely faculties and departments, was replaced by a single internal scientific structure with new roles: departments (Donina et al., Citation2014).
6. Italian universities’ freedom to establish courses increased after 1993, while highly restrictive quality standards for the creation of new programmes were implemented in 2007 (Ministerial Decree 554/2007).
7. The iteratively reweighted least squares algorithm is used to maximize the objective function in the PPML model.
8. Only three universities were established during the period of investigation: Kore University of Enna (2004), the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Bra (2004), and the European University of Rome (2005). Thus, the competition indexes are mostly exploiting changes in the number of enrolled students over time in a university's competitors rather than changes in their spatial location.
9. The Rome–Link Campus University is also excluded because it was accredited as a university in the second half of 2011.
10.
where sp is the area (m2) of province p.
11. The results are also consistent when a negative exponential distance-decay function is considered.
12. The regression analyses rely on the ratio between tuition fee and the gross domestic product (GDP) of the origin province of students to account for the differences in household wealth across Italy.
13. In total, 74 universities excluding the Bra – University of Gastronomic Sciences (log of competition = 5.26; log of size = 8.92) are plotted to make the plot more readable.
14. For brevity, only the results of the estimates obtained by using ComPI are reported. Results obtained by using ComPI for day–week–term commutes and HHI for day–week–term commutes are similar to those reported here. The tables are available from the authors on request.
