My wife is from Jacksonville, FL. She and moved to Mississippi to get her bachelor’s degree at a college there, and then moved back to Tallahassee to get her Master’s from FSU. She told me that she could have gone pretty much anywhere, and due to her GPA, had offers from Harvard and Yale. But the best program for her field of study was at FSU. She lived with roommates while attending both schools. When we got married, she was just about done with FSU, and so she never went back to live with her parents again.
Hippy Hollow is definately right; it’s very much a coming-of-age ritual. Having just been through it myself, though, I’d have to say that although nearly everyone could go to a relatively local school, there’s a big drive to leave town, and get farther away from parents, so as to really be out on one’s own. I got that really strongly myself; the local college has a fantastic program for what I want to study and I could go there nearly free since my father works there, but I’d still be in town, and I want to make a bit of a break with my surroundings, so I’ll be off, maybe nine hours away by car. Then again, I live in a relatively affluent area, so YMMV.
There are eight universities in New Zealand. The three major ones are in Auckland, Wellington, and Dunedin. Most girls that I went to school with were going to Auckland Uni and living at home, although many of us moved into flats throughout the first two years. Victoria in Wellington was considered to be a better law school, so a few girls moved down there and lived in the Halls. Otago, in Dunedin is mostly made up of students from out of the area, partly because Dunedin itslef is a smaller city, and also because Otago has a rep for being a total ‘student experience’ - cheap rents, cheap drinks, party town.
Most of my friends have drifted in and out of flats and their parents, depending on their financial situation at the time. I moved back home so I could save for my OE, lots of my friends stayed at home so they could keep their loans reasonable. We all had the luxury of not living too far from uni though - anyone who lived outside of the cities will no doubt have a different experience to share.
So basically… it is just us? Hmm.
Last year one guy I knew won an academic medal and jetted off to Sydney with his full scholarship and several thousand dollars’ spending money. And this year one friend decided to go to Melbourne to do law. That’s all, out of everyone I know. This year I and another friend are going to Curtin and EVERY other friend is going to UWA. I swear, it’ll be like high school all over again, but with banks and travel agencies on campus. For them, anyway.
It seems that way. I lived and studied in Sydney, going to a university about 10 minutes’ drive from my place. Most people I know studied at unis in their home cities.
I’ve got as far away as I possibly could from home.
Very interesting thread FlyingRamenMonster. Just some personal observations:
It seems that the Australian education system is much flatter than most other places. You would not get a substantially different education experience at Melbourne Uni, Sydney Uni, UNSW etc. so people in the Big 3 states have very little incentive to seek education elsewhere. The only exception to this seems to be ANU where there are quite a few out-of-towners doing Law, International studies, History and other Civil Service type jobs.
Another minor factor may be that the application process is on a state by state basis. In the US, you apply to individual unis so theres not much extra effort to choose geopgraphically dispersed ones.
That alone doesn’t account for everything though, IMHO. I went to a Snooty Boarding School in Victoria for HS and the class makeup was about 30% international students, 20% Rural Students, and 50% local students. Every year, they publish a breakdown of what people are doing post HS and an overwhelming 90% are pursuing education within victoria. So, taking into account people on GAP year, people not going to uni and people who went overseas and international students who have returned home. All in all, barely about 3% choose to do uni in another state. That means that even the international students are, for some reason, overwhelmingly tied to the same state.
I don’t have much of an explaination for it. People were always puzzled as to why I wanted to go interstate and I was always puzzled by why they wanted to stay. “To be close to my friends” and “So I can see my family” seemed to be the top two reasons but this seems to be not as big a deal in other countries.