Dr. Eva Maria Vögtle

In our research, we analyse the phenomenon of international student mobility by combining and testing aspects of different perspectives (e.g. political, economic, and cultural factors) and, as others have done before (Spilimbergo, 2009; Vögtle and Windzio 2016), using aggregate data, we focus on the attributes of countries and the relationship between them to explain patterns of international student exchange between them.

With the introduction of higher education institutions following a different model than ‘traditional’ universities, access to higher education has been diversified. However, recent research has indicated that this institutional diversification is often accompanied by an increased degree of stratification with different types of institutions, or individual institutions, conveying different levels of prestige and, possibly, labour market returns (Arum, Gamoran, & Shavit, 2007; Reimer & Jacob, 2011; Triventi, 2013; Marconi, 2015; Marginson, 2016). Furthermore, existing research points towards the fact that students from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to concentrate in lower-prestige higher education institutions.

Preferential attachment or hegemony, from a political science standpoint/perspective, means an indirect form of government in which the hegemon dominates geopolitically subordinated states by implicit means instead of direct military force. From social network perspective, a hegemon can be identified from the “common” states by its position in a cooperative network. In terms of Preferential attachment it is more likely that international students connect to a more central node (hence country) rather than to a marginal one. Thus already existing exchange relationships enforce future ones.