Partner Article

The Brain Drain - Why do graduates leave the North West?

A regular conversation in our office, Careers at Lancaster University, is about the destinations of our graduates. Due to our close ties with SMEs across Lancashire and Cumbria we are well aware that we, and our regional higher education partners, are very good at nurturing talent but could do more when it comes to retaining them to continue their careers locally.

Figures from the recent Destination of Leavers survey show that only relatively few graduates from our university remain in Lancashire or Cumbria after graduation (this excludes health and teachers). As you can fully imagine the top destinations are London and Manchester.

When we are in the community we regularly speak to business leaders who are fully aware of the problem. Leaders from Blackpool to Barrow and beyond have told us about the challenges they face attracting future leaders to work for their companies.

There are problems that we face. Only a limited number of large corporate companies who recruit graduates have a significant presence in the North West. That said I think part of the problem is that historically when we define the North West we have a tendency to start off by saying what we are not, “Well it’™s no Manchester,” or “it isn’t London though is it.”

No, it€‘s neither, but as a proud Lancastrian I can tell you what the North West is. It’s an area of outstanding natural beauty, an area of great community and friendly people, opportunities for sports and recreation, wonderful restaurants and great nightlife, culturally diverse and a wonderful place to raise a family. Transport links on the West Coast Mainline mean you can get from Lancaster to London in just over 2 hours. From North Lancashire you can be in Manchester or Liverpool City Centres in just over an hour by train or road. Cumbria particularly has low levels of crime. Housing across the region is cheap compared to other parts of the UK.

We know that SMEs would often like to recruit graduates and there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that part of the issue is just a breakdown in communication between companies and higher education providers. Whilst we have conversations regularly perhaps they are not the right conversations.

There is more we can do to embrace the outflow of talent and improve the North West as a greater competitive area to attract future leaders. There is acknowledgement of the issue between major stakeholders (higher education, the business community & local government) but perhaps this needs to be a community wide issue in which everyone plays a part. Certainly there is room to improve dialogue and come up with a more streamlined approach to solving this mystery. And indeed, what about the graduates themselves, the ones that move away, what are their opinions and what could we have done to make them stay or attract graduates from elsewhere?

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Lancaster ICV .