The influence of institutional and geographic factors on the enrollment of out-of-state freshmen at four-year colleges

The mobility of knowledge workers is of great concern not only at the international level, but also at the subnational level as states and regions compete for talent. Given the importance of knowledge workers to regional economies, it is not surprising that many states have implemented programs targeting future knowledge workers as early as high school. The institutional and geographic factors underlying the enrollment of out-of-state freshmen at four-year colleges in the United States have important implications for planning and evaluating these programs; understanding the effects of these factors is essential for attracting talented students from other states, limiting the outmigration of a state\u27s own students, and building a state\u27s economy. This study helps advance knowledge about college student migration by providing parameter estimates of the institutional and geographic factors and showing the degree to which each of the factors matter. The findings presented in this study pertain to first-time, degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students from the 48 contiguous United States attending four-year postsecondary institutions within the contiguous United States and the District of Columbia. A total of 1,174 institutions are included in the study, which together enrolled 308,719 (70%) of the 441,862 out-of-state freshmen students with a known state of residence attending any degree-granting postsecondary institution in the United States in fall 2006. Based on a conceptual framework that integrates the economic and sociological models of college choice with geographic models of human migration, this study compares the results of four state-to-institution spatial interaction models: the Poisson, negative binomial, zero-inflated Poisson, and zero-inflated negative binomial. Results from the model with the best fit, the zero-inflated negative binomial model, indicate that the variables that are associated with an increased number of out-of-state freshmen enrolled from a particular home state (i.e., state of residence), in rank order, are: adjacency, participation in a tuition reciprocity agreement, being in a state with a broad-based merit scholarship program, higher yield rates, higher tuition relative to peer institutions, and excess higher education capacity within the institution\u27s state. Meanwhile, increases in the percentage of Pell grant recipients at an institution, presence of a broad-based merit scholarship program in the home state, and excess higher education capacity in the home state are associated with a decreased number of freshmen enrolled at an out-of-state institution from the home state