Olha Hrynkevych

Considering the loss of talented youth in Ukraine caused by migration, there is a growing need to investigate how to attract and retain students. The study aims to identify the peculiarities of Ukrainian student migration against the background of global patterns of academic migration, focusing on factors of countries’ attractiveness for the students. The typology of countries by the level of inbound and outbound academic migration is developed based on variation analysis. The correlation analysis is used to identify the factors that influence countries’ attractiveness to students. The analysis of educational policies of the most attractive countries for Ukrainian students is fulfilled using the contextual analysis of legislative norms on academic mobility. In the global dimension, the variation of both inbound and outbound academic mobility is closely related to a country’s economic level, measured by GNI per capita. However, the correlation analysis did not confirm the higher migration attractiveness of countries with a high level of economic development (correlation with GNI per capita is –0.147). The impact of employment and social and economic resilience of an economy was relatively significant, with the correlation coefficients of 0.426 and 0.371. The analysis of educational policies of host countries showed the active use of language integration tools, the combined use of financial mechanisms, and the involvement of universities in career development. Implementation of the best practices of educational management in Ukraine is critical for restoring demographic and intellectual capital.

Acknowledgment
This study is funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine under the project “Higher education in the conditions of war and post-war recovery: Determinants of development to overcome threats to the restoring of human capital” (State registration number 0124U000351).

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Educational choice is increasingly understood as a multidimensional decision-making process, shaped not only by economic, institutional, and social determinants but also by behavioral mechanisms that operate under uncertainty. Drawing on human capital theory, rational choice theory, social norms theory, and behavioral economics, this study develops a theoretically grounded, a priori classification of behavioral response patterns in educational choice – a rational model, a social-norms model, and a bounded-rationality model – and quantifies the distribution of model-coded responses among Ukrainian higher education applicants. It further examines whether this distribution varies by gender, admission score, family income, and locality of secondary education. The empirical analysis is based on a survey of 405 first-year students at five Ukrainian universities, using descriptive statistics and Pearson’s chi-squared test. Rational responses predominate in the choice of higher education institution (54.0%) and study program (49.0%), whereas the choice of study city is distributed almost evenly across all three models. Gender is the only variable significantly, though weakly, associated with the distribution of model-coded responses (Cramer’s V = 0.138); admission score, family income, and locality show no statistically significant association. The findings also point to the growing role of official university websites and social media in applicants’ information-seeking behavior, and to the importance of security considerations as a context-specific factor shaping institutional choice under wartime conditions. By integrating established determinant-based theories with a behavioral decision-making perspective, the study offers a novel classification framework and practical implications for evidence-informed recruitment and communication strategies in higher education.

Acknowledgment
Funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine under the project “Higher education in the conditions of war and post-war recovery: determinants of development to overcome threats to the restoring of human capital” (State registration number 0124U000351).