First and Second Year Careers of STEM Students in Italy: A Geographical Perspective

The mobility behaviour of Italian university has feed an increasing interest on the public debate. The very particular geographical characteristics of the country, jointly with the recognized persistence of the economic gap between the Southern and Northern regions, push more and more students in moving from the first macro-region toward the latter. This article will focus on the differences in the performance of those students who decide to move for their studies, against those who remain close to their hometowns. In order to analyse this issue, we conduct multilevel modelling techniques, using administrative microdata from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) referring to the first two years of the career of students from the cohort 2014/2015, enrolled in STEM fields