Expenditure and displacement impacts of mobile higher education students:

Students in higher education are highly mobile, they move between countries and within countries to seek education. Typically this involves young adults moving from home to access the higher education institution of choice. From the point of view of an individual student and his family significant amounts have to be spent to pay for term time costs. These are at least partially funded through saving incomes earned locally. These term time expenditures are then spent at the place of study, typically a central city. This gives rise to a spatial demand-shift effect, where students increase consumption where they study and reduce consumption where they are from. Because of this, the location of HEIs can have an important impact not only upon their host economies but also on the localities where students originate from. This paper analysis the flow of students within Scotland and the resulting spatial shift of consumption expenditures. Student records data are used to determine the origin and term time destination of Scottish HE students and HE students in Scotland, allowing for differences in mode of study and term time accommodation. I analyse the flow of students in and out of Scotland, as well as between central and peripheral regions within Scotland, focusing on the Highlands & Islands (H&I) and its interaction with the Rest of Scotland (ROS). Using survey-based expenditure profiles and a custom built 2-region Input-Output table the economic impact of these student flows are estimated for both sending and receiving regions.