Higher education and unemployment: analysis of the demand and supply determinants amongst all courses

• Autor(a) principal: Farófia, Maria João Toscano
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/19141
• topic: Supply; Demand; Higher education; Unemployment.; Oferta; Procura; Ensino superior; Desemprego

During the first decade of the 21st Century, social and economic concerns (such as budget deficit and a fragile economy) led the Portuguese Government to publish unemployment rates, by pair of course and Higher Education Institution (HEI) in order to reassess funding to assign to HEIs based on their course demand, and enable candidates to make a more informed choice. Such measure may have influenced the closure of some courses and the increase in vacancies of others, which is why this study emerges. The strength index is our dependent variable, resulting from the ratio between the number of 1st option candidates and the number of vacancies, for a given course associated with an HEI's organic unit. We measured the determinants of the demand for higher education courses and the impact of disclosing the unemployment information, for the demand adjustment for courses in Portugal, from 2005 until 2016, using panel data. The results revealed a negative correlation between the unemployment rate and the strength index. All other determinants (GDP, population density and a dummy variable, built from the percentage of candidates from the district of origin with most candidates per course) had the expected signs. The robustness exercises showed that most signs are robust when dividing by degree, NUTSII region, candidates and graduates’ gender, and fields of study. We concluded that the influence of the unemployment rate on course choice and HEI is consensual and that it may have an impact on the demand for each course and on the respective supply by HEIs.