A place for everything (and everyone)

MillionPlus has long made the case that modern universities are proud and vital anchors in their local communities, playing a critical role as placemakers in their local area.

In today’s United Kingdom, the fate of the local university (or universities) is intertwined with that of its local community. As a key employer with economic activity stretching across the region, a university acts as a central pillar in the local economy. Modern university expenditure adds an economic benefit of £17bn across the UK, including supporting over 210,000 jobs.

These universities are future-looking, employer-savvy and punch above their weight in terms of the world class research they produce. All this means, they are ideally placed to provide solutions to the challenges of the 21st century.

And crucially, modern universities play a key role in feeding local graduate labour markets, as over 68% of working graduates at MillionPlus universities, live, study and then find work in the same region after graduating, more than 20% higher than the same figure for the whole university sector.

By providing graduates who overwhelmingly stay local, many of them in key public service professions, working with employers to create new pathways into education while employing thousands themselves, modern universities are already key difference makers in their regions.

Which is why admissions data paints a somewhat concerning picture. Because while modern universities are found in every corner of Great Britain, there are stark divides between regions in terms of the number of people who go to university.

The average participation rate of 18-year-olds in higher education is 36%, however, this average masks significant differences between the regions and countries across the UK. The UK has one of the highest regional disparities among OECD countries, reaffirming the ongoing challenges surrounding access and participation in higher education. By fifteen days after results day, London (while still having deep inequalities of its own, which we must acknowledge) had the highest participation rate among 18-year-olds (51%), followed by Northern Ireland (39.4%) and the South East (38.4%). This compares to 29% in the North East and 29.8% in Scotland, which have the lowest participation rates across the UK.

While some regions have seen significant growth in the proportion of 18-year-olds participating in higher education, others have experienced much more modest increases. Between 2015 and 2024, for example, London witnessed a near 13% increase in its participation rate (38.2% to 51%), meanwhile the North East saw a 1.4% increase (27.6% to 29%) in the same period. Equally, while the number of disadvantaged students entering HE has increased, the gap in participation rates between the most and least disadvantaged students has continued to grow. This puts into sharp focus the importance of taking further action to address the persisting disparities, to ensure opportunities are available to all, irrespective of region.

The number of mature entrants to HE, with whom careers in nursing and teaching are traditionally popular, have continued a decade-long decline. We know these students are more debt averse on average than their 18-year-old counterparts and that students generally are at the sharp end of the cost of living crisis, with more having to balance their courses with full or nearly full-time work to get by. Increased maintenance funding, which has fallen well behind inflation in recent years, and restoring grants for the most in need might go some way to tear down that particular roadblock.

Given what we know about modern university graduates and where they tend to live and work when they complete their studies, that equates to thousands of nurses, teachers, paramedics and other essential public sector workers who could be performing those functions but are not. Unfilled posts on hospital wards and in schools are a persistent and growing problem,  a Gordian knot which successive governments have not been able to unpick.

Modern universities are just as important in producing skills for the private sector, often tied intrinsically through place. For example, the proximity of the University of Suffolk to British Telecom’s (BT) innovation labs at Adastral Park has led to close collaboration. This has resulted in programmes at the university focused on computer science, digital networks and cybersecurity to help meet the core skills requirements of BT. Likewise, the needs of the forestry industry in Cumbria has seen the University of Cumbria develop a unique Development Woodland Officer Apprenticeship, while the university also works closely with Sellafield Ltd to accommodate the skills needed for the region’s world-leading nuclear waste processing and decommissioning industry. These are just two examples.

There is a vast ocean of untapped potential across the regions that the Government must get to paddling in. While there are any number of questions plaguing higher education that need answers – not least a funding system which undermines all of the good that modern universities are in a position to do – a big one is this: how do we make someone from South Shields as likely to go to university as someone from Southwark?