Figure 3

Illustrates the positive assortment of features along the Higher Education Spaces of Portugal and Chile, nodes have been colored according to the gender balance of enrolled students during the 2015 applications in Portugal (a), 2011 (b) and 2017 (c) in Chile. Panels (d)–(q) show the autocorrelations between the aggregated characteristic of pairs of degree program separated by n links in the Higher Education Networks of Portugal (d), (g), (j), (m), and (p) and Chile (e), (f), (h), (i), (k), (l), (n), and (o). Bars represent the autocorrelation averaged over all observation years, and error bars the standard error in the estimation of the coefficients. Positive (negative) autocorrelation coefficients are shown in green (red). Bars in light colors indicate an autocorrelation that is not significantly different from zero (failed a t-test with \(p > 0.05\). The characteristics under analysis correspond to the gender balance (d)–(f), application scores (g)–(i), demand-supply rate (j)–(l), unemployment levels (m), students mobility (n)–(o), and dropout rates (p)