Tamanho Fonte: 

Peripheral regions place great expectations on higher education institutions (HEIs) to increase human capital not only through their mission of education and production of knowledge but also as engines of attraction for students from the outside, from the main city regions and richer areas. While HEIs in those lagging regions need to attract students, the regions also need to retain them after graduation. Only a limited number of the best graduates, however, will probably get the few “good” jobs in those regions. Hence, the likelihood of outside students returning to their regions of origin or other, once finishing higher education is very high. Migration of graduates, and particularly the migration of recent graduates, has been quite researched in general in relation with employability issues. There are also some studies that connect graduates’ migration with former migrations of students and on the probability of return to the region of origin of those students, after graduation. Patrick Rérat frames students’ and graduates’ migrations in a life course perspective with three main components covering the past, the present and the future; the family’s social trajectory, the migration trajectory and the professional trajectory. Push-pull factors effects similar to migration flows in general have been identified on students’ or graduates’ migrations; the latter however involve highly qualified or talented young individuals making them distinctive from common migrations. Studies on the access to public higher education in Portugal have analysed the students’ migration flows and have inferred that there is a stratification of institutions. Distance is not the only factor that determines students' choices. The reputation and position in the rankings of the HEIs is critical in attracting students and may induce students’ flows of different intensities. Most studies on access do not consider the micro-level migration decisions of students. This study aims at understanding some aspects of those processes and analyses the students’ migration flows by fields of study or programmes, by grades and region of origin, for a sample of small Portuguese public universities located in the hinterland, in second tier cities. The methodology includes an extensive analysis of databases on the access to public higher education in Portugal, and a comparative or relational qualitative analysis of local surveys on the characteristics and perceptions of the students’ social background. Those universities in peripheral regions are very dependent on the demand of students from outside of their own districts and are not able to capture a sufficient number of local students, to reduce this dependency. Local candidates with higher grades, tend to leave and enrol outside in a larger city, Lisbon and Porto above all. This migration flow induces a social downgrading in the region of origin. The outward flows generate however counter flows of students coming from the outside to the region, due to the Portuguese public system of allocation of vacancies and numerus clausus. Understanding those flows of students and the underlying causes is relevant to design regional development policies that aim at fostering human capital.