Where they go, what they do and why it matters: the importance of geographic accessibility and social class for decisions relating to higher education institution type, degree level and field of study

This article considers the impact of geographic accessibility and social class on school leavers when making decisions relating to higher education institution (HEI) type, degree level and field of study. Using a novel and comprehensive Irish data set, we consider a number of joint decisions facing school leavers in relation to where and what to study and employ a range of bivariate choice models which allows us to control for correlations in these decisions. We find that geographic accessibility and social class play an important role in determining outcomes relating to HEI type, degree level and field of study. We argue that these decisions are important in terms of future labour market and other outcomes for school leavers and that current policy in Ireland does not go far enough in mitigating the impact of distance and socio-economic barriers on these outcomes.