Spencer Large Research Grant on Education

Saurabh Khanna

31 May, 2024

Regional Disparity

  • London, the South East and South West of England make up a disproportionate share of UK applications and admittance to Oxford (2021 Access Strategy)

  • CredOx intends to better understand and tackle the reasons driving this inequity

Regional Disparity: Evidence from the US

  • 56.2% of public four-year college students attend an institution under an hour’s drive away.
  • Nearly 70% of college students attend within two hours of their home.
  • In 1990, about 37.9% of four-year public college students attended within 50 miles of home.
  • Enrollments in new universities in California primarily came from high schools within 25 miles of a new campus.
  • About 1 in 6 American high school seniors lack access to a nearby college.

Source

Regional Disparity: Evidence from the UK & Australia

  • Geographical distance to university has a negative association with university enrollment (White & Lee, 2019)

  • The proximity of high-ranking institutions to students’ residences influences their probability of attending such institutions, leading to a ‘postcode lottery’ in higher education (Mangan, Hughes, Davies, & Slack, 2010)

  • Living closer to a university significantly associates with higher education expectations and entry, particularly for youth from low socioeconomic backgrounds (Parker, Jerrim, Anders, & Astell-Burt, 2016)

Distance can be a barrier to accessing quality higher education

  • Travel costs

  • Accommodation costs

  • Information accessibility

  • Social networks and peer effects

  • Infrastructure limitations

  • Long term options (where to get a job, live, etc.)

  • Relocation hesitance

Objectives


  • Uncover the ‘cost of being at a distance’ from quality universities

  • at a granular (postcode) level

  • across the United Kingdom

Approach

  1. Postcode level data on the population [Multiple indices of deprivation, population density, Living costs, …]

  2. Coordinates of all UK universities from UCAS [including the Russell Group]

Assess the cost of movement between each combination of 1 and 2 (roughly 290M combinations), building on approaches used in healthcare

Validate estimates using a population-level UK survey through Prolific

Result

Produce a national level map of the ‘cost of being at a distance’ from quality universities

Beyond the UK

  1. Granular data on the population from Worldpop [Deprivation, population density, …]

  2. Coordinates of 21000 universities from UNESCO WHED

Produce a global map of the ‘cost of being at a distance’ from quality universities