  Is it possible to derive organizing principles of higher education systems
from the applicants' choices? Here we introduce the Higher Education Space
(HES) as a way to describe the complex relationship between degree programs.
The HES is based on the application of methods from network science to data on
the revealed preferences of applicants to the higher education systems of Chile
and Portugal. Our work reveals: 1) the existence of a positive assortment of
features -- such as gender balance, application scores, unemployment levels,
demand-supply ratio, etc -- along the network structure of the HES; 2) that the
decaying of the prevalence level of a feature from a focal degree program
extends beyond the dyadic relationships captured by the HES; 3) temporal
variations in different features do not spillover/propagate throughout the
system in the same way; 4) differences in unemployment levels reported among
pairs of degree programs are minimized when taking into consideration the
connectivity structure of the HES, largely outperforming the differences in
matched pairs using traditional similarity measures; and 5) grouping of degree
programs based in the network structure of the HES provides an applicant
perspective that complements existing classification systems. Our findings
support the HES as a multi-dimensional framework that can effectively
contribute to the governance of higher education systems.
