Abstract
This paper investigates the structure and composition of the social network formed on the campus of the Faculty of Economics and Business of Diego Portales University, Chile, exposing a series of characteristics that are aligned with similar research in the field of networks. We use a model of social networks formation in order to understand socioeconomic and academic factors that predict the formation of friendship between two students. Specifically, we test empirically our model, using students' administrative information. Of special interest is the impact of the length of stay of the students in the university, with which we refer to the years completed in the degree course, in the probability of establishing friendship ties where being socioeconomically different is a condition. The mechanism behind a result like this is the sense of belongingness that being part of the same institution may induce amongst students. By means of counterfactual simulations we found evidence in favor that passing through the university increases the probability of forming friendship networks, which can mean a kind of social capital, thus reducing socioeconomic segregation from the Chilean school system. Given the importance of this finding, we believe that policies that increase the sense of belongingness such as cultural events, leaderships programs, and community should be implemented on university campuses.
Highlights
The goal of this investigation is to cast light on the effect that university has upon the chance of befriend students from different socioeconomic backgrounds
The focus of this research is on the friendship network formed at the School of Economics and Business of Diego Portales University, which has administrative information that provides data on the students referred to the year of admission, gender, ranking of grades in the university, as well as socioeconomic data such as the type of financing employed to pay for the program, type of school from which they come and the commune in which they reside, the latter provide relevant information for the analysis of the central axis of the research that aims to socioeconomic segregation at the university
The sample used contains 965 students who make up the friendship network formed at the school, for whom there is a complete set of information on the variables mentioned above
Summary
The goal of this investigation is to cast light on the effect that university has upon the chance of befriend students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Chilean cities and schools present high levels of socioeconomic segregation (Lambiri and Vargas, 2011; Elacqua, 2012; Trevino et al, 2014). The latter changes when students arrive into university, a place where is possible to observe more mixed communities (Espinoza and González, 2012). Networks analysis and their different components are marked by the actors tendency to establish relationships in terms of how similar they are (Lazarsfeld and Merton, 1954; Currarini et al, 2009), and for this reason the concept homophily is widely linked to a network’s segregation levels (Blau, 1977; McPherson et al, 2001). Homophilia’s level on the process of bounding plays a key role, as it determines
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