How much of the benefit of college is facilitating moving?
Suppose that two people from the same town attend colleges of equal quality, but one of them attends college locally and one relocates. I would bet that the relocator has more economic success down the road. It is a difficult hypothesis to test, but an interesting one.
Consider the effects of underlying motivations.
Think also in terms of “satisfactions;” not simply economic “success.”
The relocator may more often be seeking “self-realization;” motivated to initiate actions and relationships.
The location-holder may more often be prone to responsive, rather than initiative conduct.
To over-simplify; one may be prone to go out and see what can be done, the other prone to hone the skills of dealing with what life brings.
Reminds me of an ‘Onion’ classic from a couple of years ago:
“Unambitious Loser With Happy, Fulfilling Life Still Lives In Hometown”
http://www.theonion.com/article/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfilling-life-still-33233
Hah, I had the exact same thought. You beat me by five minutes.
Your hypothesis rings true. The person who stays home for college may be able to spend less on education, though, by being able to live at home, avoid having to get a meal plan and eat in the cafeterias, etc.
Also, this came to mind:
http://www.theonion.com/article/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfilling-life-still-33233
For the record, I did go away for college and no longer live in my home state.
My parents said they would help pay for college if I went out of state, but would not if I stayed in state, because the in-state schools were not top schools. I ended up going to the least expensive top school in my field of interest.
It never occurred to me to go back to my hometown or stay in my college town after college, which meant a whole country of opportunity to choose from for that present and future.
I would bet that the relocator has more economic success down the road.
I would make that same bet.
The interesting thing to me is how do you control for the networks students get as a result of going to school nearby vs. somewhere else. I would probably want to compare in state vs. out of state students with the same parental income.
I think it’s as much about “did they move out of their parent’s house” as move out of town. The bit where people keep their own household, manage some part of their own finances and logistics (even in a dorm), keep their own schedules, and so forth.
Depends a little bit on how big the town is too. Never leaving Maquoketa, IA where I grew up? Kind of limiting. Never moving away from Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Houston – will that really limit your life?
I wonder if a lot of the declining benefit of college is the rebound of graduates moving back home. Thus they are re-establishing the ties that bind that were frayed by relocating for school. Only this time, assuming a well-paying job offer doesn’t support the move, moving away will not have the ready-made logistic support of dorm/campus life.
So your “vocational” major graduate could break away again but the Liberal Arts major may only end up increasingly bound to their hometown support network.
Endogeneity would be crushing to any empirical analysis here.
I think that is education’s bread and butter.
This should be moderately easy to test – compare students who grew up near enough to good schools to live at home, both within that group for stayed at home v lived on/near campus, and to students who moved from someplace not near a top school.
For example, UC Berkeley – compare kids from the Central Valley to those who grew up in Berkeley/El Cerrito.