College leaders are being invited to share ideas to help graduates find skilled work in their hometowns.

The Office for Students (OfS), the new higher education regulator, has set up a £6 million fund for colleges and universities to suggest ways to help students find graduate-level employment close to home. Between £100,000 and £300,000 is available per project - or up to £500,000 for collaborative bids.

More than half (55 per cent) of graduates looked for jobs away from home after they graduated, according to the 2015-16 Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey.

But students taking HE courses in FE colleges - who make up one-tenth of the total number of HE students - tend to live closer to home during their course. A 2017 Education and Training Foundation report found that the average distance from home to campus was 15 miles for college-based students, compared to 53 miles for those studying at university.

Help students find ‘highly-skilled employment’

An OfS spokesperson said that students who move away from home to study or work were more likely to find highly-skilled employment than those who stay at home, adding: “Many students, through choice or circumstance, study and then pursue careers in the area where they have grown up. The new funding competition will seek bids for workable programmes which help broaden choice for those graduates.”

The spokesperson suggested the projects could, for example, aim to help particular groups of graduates work with partners to bring about change in the local labour market or investigate and address the factors that influence decisions on where to work after graduation.

It is the first of the OfS’ “challenge competitions” which it says will respond to “different types of priorities for, and issues affecting, students, where clear benefits would be derived from a targeted funding intervention.”

More jobs in bigger cities 

OfS chief executive, Nicola Dandridge, said the graduate labour market itself was unevenly distributed, with larger cities offering more varied jobs than smaller cities and towns and fewer still in rural areas.

“We are increasingly aware that many graduates have to, or choose to, stay in their hometowns after they graduate,” she said. “But, in some areas, there are fewer graduate opportunities.”

Ms Dandridge added: “This competition will enable universities and colleges, working with students, local employers, and careers organisations, to identify the barriers to local graduate employment, and to find new solutions. This will help ensure graduates can use their degrees fully, supporting local and regional productivity, prosperity and social mobility.”

The deadline for entering the competition is 5pm on Monday 26 November.