From South to North? Mobility of Southern Italian students at the transition from the first to the second level university degree

In the last decades, the Italian University System has encountered severalstructural reforms aimed at making it more internationally competitive. Amongthem, the introduction of the University financial autonomy has triggered an “internal”competition among Universities to attract students from the entire country.Students’ enrollment at the first level has decreased significantly especially after theeconomic crisis of 2008, while the students’ migration from the South to the Centraland Northern regions of the country has increased. These phenomena have createdfurther inequalities within the country and a cultural and socio-economic loss forthe South that does not appear to slow down. While Italian internal mobility at thefirst level has been previously investigated, second level mobility has received littleattention. This work attempts to fill this gap, by analyzing the transition from first tosecond level university degree courses of the Southern Italian students in terms ofmacro-regional mobility. The data were provided by the Italian Ministry of Education,University and Research. They are a national level longitudinal administrativemicro-data on educational careers of the freshmen enrolled at the first level Italianuniversity degree course in 2008-09 and followed up to 2014.We will use a discretetimecompeting risk model with the aim to detect the determinants of the choicesof Southern Italian students after their bachelor degree: discontinuing university;enrolling at the second level University degree course in a Southern university, or(moving) to Central or Northern universities. We will analyze the role played bydemographic variables, time elapsed to get the first level degree, the performancein the previous schooling career, etc. in order to provide mover or stayer profiles ofSouthern bachelors.