Analysis of international student mobility by education levels

This thesis examines the factors influencing international student mobility and how these effects vary by education level. Drawing on the literature on gravity models of migration, the study analyzes OECD data on international student flows from 2013 to 2020, covering 24 destination countries and 174 origins. Consistent with prior research, the Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator is employed. In addition, the analysis addresses the relatively underexplored issue of multilateral resistance to migration. The key finding is that master's students exhibit a distinct approach to studying abroad: whereas bachelor's and doctoral students tend to follow a migration-based trajectory, master's students adopt a more balanced combination of the migration model and the human capital model. Beyond this overarching result, the study also identifies several education-level-specific variations in the influence of different factors.