Education
Study: Majority study close to home
Women choose a university further away more often than men. photo
© Thomas Frey/dpa
After graduating from school, study far away from home or close to your parents’ house? For a large proportion of those affected, the answer is clear.
Proximity to home is an important factor for the majority of students when choosing where to study. According to an evaluation carried out for the first time by the Center for Higher Education Development (CHE), almost half of the students who obtained their university entrance qualification in Germany chose a university less than 50 kilometers away.
According to the report, two thirds are less than 100 kilometers. Only one in five studies at a distance of more than 200 kilometers from their hometown. The data is based on figures from the Federal Statistical Office for the winter semester 2022/2023.
Those who can are more likely to stay nearby
“The high number of people in Germany who are currently studying close to home certainly has many reasons, including increased energy and housing costs. The development corresponds to the results from the CHE university ranking. Here too, we are seeing a growing proportion of students, currently 28 percent, who still live with their parents,” says study director Marc Hüsch.
Admission restrictions and award procedures in some subjects such as medicine and psychology ensure that the distances to home are greater. For subjects that are offered nationwide, such as business administration or mechanical engineering, the so-called median value is 39 or 33 kilometers. This means: 50 percent of the students come from a distance of less than 39 and 33 kilometers – the other half from further away. For universities with rare subject offerings, the median value is around 108 kilometers.
Women choose a university further away more often than men. Half (median value) of female students choose a place of study that is more than 54 kilometers away, while for men the median value is 44 kilometers.
TU Munich and TU Dresden are particularly prominent
The TU Munich is the most successful when it comes to so-called migration behavior from abroad: five percent of students who did not obtain their admission in Germany go to the Bavarian capital. No other university in the Federal Republic can keep up with this value.
Nationwide, TU Dresden occupies the top spot in terms of the so-called utilization rate. This analyzes how many students in a group are studying at the university from a defined distance. 9 percent of school leavers with university entrance qualifications who live between 50 and 100 kilometers from the Saxon state capital have chosen the Technical University. “The TU Dresden is popular across the board, particularly in the eastern German districts,” write the study authors.
Not surprisingly: “In most districts and independent cities, the universities that are most popular when choosing a university are those that are close to the respective district or city. These include the independent city of Kassel, the Fürth district and the Siegen-Wittgenstein district “, write the study authors. In these districts or independent cities, more than 40 percent of the people who received university admission there would study at the most popular university, which is in the immediate distance, it goes on to say.
The CHE is a joint, non-profit subsidiary of the Bertelsmann Foundation and the University Rectors’ Conference (HRK).