Research by career consultants at the University of Bradford explores how costs and location are inhibiting commuter students’ transition to professional work after leaving university.

We have a large body of evidence that commuter students face more barriers to success at university – but what happens to them afterwards?

Using a Jisc research grant, we spent a year tracking commuter students’ graduate journeys and gathering their impressions of what it was like to leave university and enter the professional world during the cost-of-living crisis.

Our report How the cost of living crisis affects commuter students’ careers includes analysis of graduates just after summer graduation, and then again, six months later. Most of our participants were BAME, first in the family to attend university and came from neighbourhoods with low HE participation.

Regional loyals

You may expect that if a student has chosen not to move away for university, then they are unlikely to move away for work, and you would be right.

After tracking the trajectories of over a hundred graduates from 2023, only 6% of them had chosen to change location for work or study in the six months after graduation. This is hardly surprising amidst a cost-of-living and housing crisis.

It also aligns with the nationwide statistics that 45% of graduates are ‘regional loyals’, who study in their home region and then remain there to work after university.

In the longer term, it would be interesting to track this into the future, as over 60% of our respondents lived in the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country according to IMD.

If university education is a means to social mobility, you could reasonably anticipate that this should be reflected in where graduates live.

However, what does this geographical immobility mean for commuter graduate career success in the immediate months after graduation?

Employability in the curriculum

Unfortunately, almost 20% of the graduates we surveyed were unemployed six months after graduation and the majority had been so since the end of their course.

These graduates reported weighing up the potential for an advertised salary to cover their expenses, and the cost of commuting, before deciding whether to apply for a job.

The majority of our unemployed graduates were South Asian and came from deprived neighbourhoods. For universities with large widening participation cohorts or specialist teams for WP minorities it would be wise to work with this demographic during their study to support them into the workplace.

This is also the case for employers. The more they engage with curriculum development, the happier they should be with applicants.

Employers expecting graduates to have a well-rounded collection of extra-curricular experiences in today’s economy is unreasonable if they also want to achieve ambitious diversity targets. Many students have to spend precious time working and commuting whilst at university.

Read about ways to embed employability into the curriculum in a sustainable way

Cost-of-living impact

Happily, most of our graduates were working six months after graduation and 79% of these were in highly skilled employment.

Almost all these graduates (73%) felt that the cost-of-living had impacted their career decision making. Many graduates said that they had been encouraged to apply for roles with higher pay.

From a university perspective, this is not a bad thing, bumping up average salaries in the Graduate Outcomes survey can lead to better marketing opportunities or league table results.

Graduates also reported choosing to apply for jobs closer to home to save on fuel or transport costs, but often this became a higher priority than a role linked to their degree, ambitions, or something they would enjoy.

A third of our working graduates felt that their current position did not align with the aspirations they had when they left university. This is something for universities to reflect on.

Ideally, a university’s course offering should reflect the availability of work in the surrounding area – there’s no point offering marine biology if you’re based in the midlands and 90% of your students are local.

On the flip side, the best universities drive innovation within their region, so another point of reflection is to work with local businesses to drive growth where there are current gaps in opportunity for graduates.

Happy postgraduates

Of course, some of our commuter students were still commuter students six months after graduation and had continued onto postgraduate study. Almost all of these remained in the West Yorkshire region. These graduates were the happiest with their career position and how it aligned with their past aspirations.

However, these students did report that cost had been a big factor in their choice of course, with a couple saying they had turned down offers at their ‘first choice’ university as ‘it was too expensive to even think about’.

In our focus groups and first survey, many students reported discounting postgraduate study as an option due to cost. We have long known that the government’s postgraduate student finance offer does not adequately cover the cost of study.

Increasing scholarships and bursaries for commuter students and graduates should be a key priority for universities and would be a positive step toward addressing diversity problems within academia. At our university, we have Brad-Attain – a project offering studentships, placements, internships and travel bursaries to BAME students and alumni.

Supporting students

We asked our commuter graduates how we should be supporting future students when they graduate.

A popular suggestion was to provide budgeting or financial advice for life after graduation. This makes sense, as 66% of our graduates reported worrying about money on a regular basis post-graduation and even more than that said they had needed to restrict their spending.

As a minimum, it would be worthwhile for career service leaders to ensure that all staff feel confident discussing budgeting and commuting in relation to job searches. Ideally, universities could partner with local organisations that offer financial advice to support students and graduates.

Overall, once our commuter students leave university their location and the availability of work and study options will have a major impact on their graduate success.

Building strong regional economies will be key in the long term. In the short term, employers should advertise any support they have, such as staff benefits for travel cards, parking or relocation, in their graduate career webpages, to attract applicants.

Employer facing teams at universities should prioritise local relationships and showcase these to commuter students and graduates as much as possible.

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