ABSTRACT
There is extensive evidence that substantial inequalities persist in relation to higher education participation and outcomes in many countries. One potential barrier to participation is geographic accessibility, which can lead to a wide range of direct and indirect costs. This chapter examines the theoretical and empirical economics literature on the impact of geographic accessibility for a range of decisions relating to higher education participation. It reviews three main methodological approaches: those that model individual student choices, those that consider aggregate student migration flows, and those based on stated preference techniques. In addition, the chapter presents an illustrative example of the importance of travel distance based on recent data from Ireland. In particular, it uses Sankey diagrams to illustrate the highly localized nature of school to higher education transitions and gravity models of student migrations to measure the elasticity of flows with respect to distance. The chapter’s overall conclusion is that distance matters for students, higher education institutions, and policymakers. The chapter finishes with a discussion of a range of proposed policy responses that aim to address various equity and efficiency concerns related to disparities in geographic accessibility to higher education.
