Home or Away? Gender Differences in the Effects of an Expansion of Tertiary Education Supply

The aim of this paper is to estimate the effects of the expansion of tertiary education supply on the educational choices of young Italian high school graduates. A quasi-experimental setting given by the reform of the tertiary education system implemented in 2001 is exploited. The reform was embraced at different points in time and to different degrees: it created significant changes in local educational supply in certain provinces while being only marginally relevant in others. This geographical variation is exploited through a diff-in-diff strategy to estimate the impact of the increase in tertiary education supply on enrolment and the mobility decisions of high school graduates. Major gender differences emerge: the increase of local tertiary education supply generated a significant increase in female enrolment rates leaving unchanged those of males; men, on the other hand, switched from studying outside their province of residence to studying at the local university. These results would suggest the existence of a relationship of substitutability between studying away from home and studying at the local university for boys, but not for girls