This paper uses the founding of the University of Lugano in the Swiss Canton of Ticino as a natural experiment to estimate the effect of distance to a university with a limited major offer on individual major choice. Our results clearly show that the effect of distance on major choice is significant and quantitatively important. The probability of an average student from Ticino to choose a major offered at the University of Lugano increased by at least 5.14 percent after the establishment of the university. The canton of Ticino is the only Italian speaking canton in Switzerland and comparatively geographically isolated from the other parts of the country. These facts suggest that our results are an upper border for the effect of distance on major choice. An important insight for policy decisions from this research is that a limited local major offer may distort major choices of high school graduates in the long run. Future research on major choice should control for distance to the next college offering a certain major because this distance might influence the results for other factors like relative income.