Outbound mobility ratio

Definition

Number of students from a given country studying abroad, expressed as a percentage of total tertiary enrolment in that country.

Data source

UIS survey of formal education and the joint UNESCO-OECD-EUROSTAT (UOE) survey.

Source definition

UNESCO Institute for Statistics

Calculation method

Number of students from a given country studying abroad, expressed as a percentage of total tertiary enrolment in that country.

Data required

Enrolment in tertiary institutions of national students studying abroad, total enrolment in tertiary education.

Interpretation

A high outbound mobility ratio indicates a high outflow of students from the specific country for study purposes, which may reflect a low retention capacity of students by the national tertiary education system.

Limitations

A comprehensive enumeration of outbound mobile students may be challenging task if there is no systemic mechanism to track outbound students by country of destination, or if the host countries (universities abroad) do not report data on the international students by country of origin.

Furthermore, the criteria used to define mobile students may vary from one country to another, which may affect the cross-country comparability of this indicator.

Purpose

To measure the mobility of students across countries for academic reasons.

Quality standards

Outbound mobility ratio should be based on enrolment in all levels of tertiary education (ISCED levels 5 to 8) and types of institutions (public and private).

The UIS sets standards, develops questionnaires and quality control protocols for country data reporting, and maintains the global database on the structure of education and enrolment data in tertiary education by students’ country of origin and sex.

Types of disaggregation

By sex, ISCED level, region or continent of destination.