The tuition fee ‘shock’: Analysing the response of first-year students to a spatially discontinuous policy change in Germany

Using the introduction of tuition fees at German public universities as an exogenous shock, this paper investigates its causal impact on the enrolment and migration decision of high-school graduates. Specifically, we conduct a quasi-experimental analysis by exploiting the spatial and temporal variation in tuition fee regimes as a result of a Federal Constitutional Court decision. Our empirical results show that the introduction of tuition fees had a particular impact on student migration. We observe three effects: first, male students show a stronger migration response compared to female students. Second, changes in migration behaviour are sensitive to geographical distance. Finally, comparing different types of higher education institutions, we find that the migration effect is larger for universities compared to technical colleges and colleges of arts or music.