College is a time for students to explore new ideas and new places, to branch outside of the familiar and identify the attractiveness of the unknown. The term “going away to college” is a familiar one and it represents the badge of honor that is going to school far from home. However, in analyzing patterns of where undergraduate students actually enrolled within 12 months of graduating high school, “far from home” isn’t actually that far for most college-bound students. In fact, in 2020 fall, the most recent data for which a complete data set is available, nearly 80% of all college-bound students enrolled in their home state, a trend that has held consistent even before the COVID-19 pandemic. As for students that do choose to enroll in a different state…well, that’s private – just under half of the students enrolled in private not-for-profit institutions come from out of state. These patterns are known as student migration and are analyzed further within this article.
Methodology
Data was collected from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) for all institutions that enrolled first-time undergraduate students within 12 months of graduating high school. This yielded a total of 5,484 institutions across the US and its territories (including Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands). Data was collected on the institution’s state and control (public, private not-for-profit, private for-profit) as well as the number of new students enrolled from each state. The metric related to the state of new student enrollment is only mandatory for even years of reporting, as such, data was pulled for the 2016, 2018, and 2020 fall semesters to maintain consistency between reported institutions and a complete dataset. Data for 2022 is not yet available and will not be available until later in the fall of 2023. Data was further summarized to determine the total enrollment of students from each state and well as the institution’s state. Geographic regions were added to further identify students that remain within travel distance of their home state.
Findings
In the time period examined between 2016 and 2020, about 80% of all first-time undergraduate students enrolled at an institution in their home state. Large public institutions help drive this figure as tuition rates tend to be cheaper for in-state students at public 4-year institutions (“state schools”) and public 2-year institutions are typically designed to supply education to the immediate surrounding community. Of all students that chose to enroll in a public institution, 87.5% did so in their home state. Further, aside from Alaska (57.9%), Vermont (67.6%), Illinois (68.7%), and Minnesota (69.2%) at least 70% of students from each of the 50 states enrolling in public institutions chose to do so in their home state. In the fall of 2020, 77.4% of all first-time students chose to enroll in a public institution (see table 1). This compares to 77.5% in 2018 and 77.6% in 2016. As this significant portion of students elect for public education, at least in their first semester, the most significant portions of enrollment remain in-state.
Table 1: First-time enrollment within 12 months by institutional control
A much different story unfolds, however, in examining the migration patterns of students choosing to enroll in private institutions. Private institutions are split between for-profit and not-for-profit institutions, with not-for-profit institutions existing in more abundance. Only about 2% of first-time students choose to enroll at private for-profit institutions in a given year (~40,000 students). Within this population, about 73% enroll at an in-state institution. Around 20% of all first-time students enroll at private not-for-profit institutions in a given year (~400,000 students). For this population, about half of enrolled students come from the same state. Table 2 shows the top 10 and bottom 10 states for which students choose to enroll in their home state in 2020.
Table 2: Top 10 and bottom 10 percentage of first-time enrollment within 12 months in-state by student's state of residence
Among the states in which students choose to leave most often are the two states most isolated from the rest of the continental United States: Alaska (48.7% in-state) and Hawai’i (59%); and a number of states in the Northeast: Vermont (47.5%), New Hampshire (51.6%), Connecticut (55.9%), and New Jersey (57.6%). The Northeast represents a particularly concentrated area of the country for private not-for-profit institutions. In fact, Massachusetts is the only state in the US (excluding the District of Columbia) that enrolls more students in private not-for-profit institutions than any other control. The concentration of private institutions in this region creates a significant competition for students between states that is unlike other areas of the country. Of the top 10 institutions by proportion of private not-for-profit first-time enrollment, eight (8) are from New England and the Mid East. Further breakdown of the proportion of students enrolled by institution’s state can be seen in table 3.
Table 3: Top 10 states by proportion of private not-for-profit first-time enrollment within 12 months
Further analysis of this data based on the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Region further indicated that students are choosing to stay relatively close to home. How these regions are defined, including US territories, is shown in table 4.
Table 4: US States and Territories by BEA Region
In combining states in this matter, it allows for some accounting of students that may live close to a border and could still easily commute to an institution in another state and may help paint the picture of just how many students are making a significant decision regarding travel for higher education. In total, in 2020, 87.6% of first-time students chose to enroll at an institution that was within their defined geographic region. This represents only a slight increase from the approximately 80% of students that chose to enroll in-state. The biggest change with this particular analysis is within the private not-for-profit sector. While students choosing public institutions increased to 92.7% in-region (from 87.5%), there were 69.4% of students that chose private not-for-profit institutions that did so in their region (compared with 51.9% in-state). Twenty percent of students in New England migrated to other regions, making it the most departed region. The Southeast, on the other hand, retained the most students at 93%. Table 5 shows this breakdown by control.
Table 5: Percent of first-time enrolled within 12 months in-region by control and student's residential region
As with states, travel between regions may be simple for those on the border as well. Further examination of travel between each region does indicate that the regions most left for often border the student’s home region. For instance, in 2020, there were 85,350 students in New England that stayed in New England, the next highest region, the Mid East borders New England and enrolled 10,206 students from the area. A full breakdown of this movement between regions can be seen in table 6.
Table 6: Number of first-time enrolled within 12 months by student's residential region and institution's region
Conclusion
Student’s preferences on going away to college, as it turns out, may not actually be too far from home. This appears to be true for a large majority of students, especially those that live outside of the Northeast, Alaska, and Hawai’i. Ultimately, the best measure of this data would examine the actual distance from home that students choose to travel. Based on how data is collected within this dataset, that measure is not possible. Nevertheless, public institutions continue to be the largest supplier of higher education enrollments and students that choose to enroll at these institutions do so within short distances. Those going away to private school, do tend to leave home (at least their state) at much higher rates. For institutions of higher education, understanding this data, where their students generally come from will become increasingly important as competition for students continues to rise. For smaller regions, such as New England or the Rocky Mountains, reaching into other areas of the country may become a necessity for continued enrollment. This research is a piece to help understand where students choose to enroll and how far the reach may be for any area. For a deeper dive into individual state trends, utilize our easy-to-use interactive dashboard.
For questions about this data and the provided analysis or for questions as to how Evolve Market Research can help your organization, please email info@evolvemarketresearch.com.
Primary data sources: National Center for Education Statistics, IPEDS Data Center
References
1 National Center for Education Statistics. National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from: https://nces.ed.gov/
2 Bureau of Economic Analysis. Regions. Retrieved fromhttps://www.bea.gov
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