At the NEON conference on 20 June our Director of Policy and Strategy, Dr Kate Wicklow, spoke on the power of local recruitment and highlighted that for HEIs to genuinely improve access, they must fundamentally ask: "What does it mean for a university to serve and be embedded in its wider community?".

Access and success is not just about the individual student but the social ecosystem in which that student lives, learns, aspires, and graduates into. We all know that there are a range of students that for whatever reason cannot, or will not, move away from home to attend university. This is often perceived as a barrier, leading to the notion that these students receive a 'consolation prize' and miss out on the 'full' university experience. Such a perspective reflects a highly elitist view of the purpose of higher education.

Wanting to stay close to home isn’t always a compromise but can be actively beneficial. When students study closer to home, they often arrive with support networks intact; family, friends, and a sense of community which can be protective factors against dropout and isolation. We know there is a growing trend of students feeling they don’t belong. Non-traditional students have often felt that: I certainly did as a first-generation student myself 20 years ago. Walking away from everything you know and your family habitus requires a lot of bravery, determination and faith. I spoke to a number of first in family students in 2020 and I was struck by just how many still said they lost friends just by wanting more for themselves. Going into higher education is not a rite of passage for all, and we must understand the risks students take sometimes to engage in higher learning.

To genuinely enrich the student experience, it's crucial to understand the unique identities, aspirations, and motivations of our local students. By viewing ‘local’ as more than just a geographical location – encompassing culture, context, and connection – we can foster an environment where students are empowered to ‘stay to transform’ rather than feeling the need to ‘leave to succeed’. This approach provides students with the social, cultural, and educational capital necessary for success and supports the growth of places. 

The idea of ‘university’ can feel foreign, elite, far away, and out of reach. But when the university is in your hometown, or is actively present in your community, those walls start to come down. 

For example Leeds Arts University works directly with local state schools to build pipelines into creative higher education that bypass traditional gatekeeping entry metrics, which often fail disadvantaged learners, and instead offers community-based workshops that reach students from local state schools with limited arts provision.

To be a local university means not just recruiting local students, but embedding yourself in local economies, education systems, and civic life. 

This includes:

  • Partnering with local further education colleges and schools to build integrated pathways into higher education.
  • Working with employers, local authorities, and voluntary organisations to co-design provision aligned with both economic need and learner aspiration.
  • Offering outreach and lifelong learning, not just for 18 year olds but for adults looking to upskill, reskill, or re-enter education.
  • Providing health, legal, cultural, and business support services that directly improve local wellbeing.
  • Opening up physical resources to the local community (sometimes with added commercial benefits). 

University College Birmingham offers clear vocational pathways for students to progress from FE to HE within the city. By aligning its vocational courses with regional growth sectors (in UCB’s case this is hospitality, healthcare and education), it offers progression rooted in place and purpose. Similarly, Harper Adams University has long demonstrated the value of place-based education for rural students and communities, ensuring that agricultural students from rural communities see their local knowledge legitimised and expanded on.

When students’ curriculum reflects the needs of their region, learning feels relevant. When universities see local learners not as the ‘left behind’, but as leaders in their communities, we begin to reverse decades of disconnection and left-behind spaces. 

However none of this is possible in the long term, or at scale, without: 

  • Funding place-based outreach and retention initiatives
  • Valuing local knowledge, not just imported prestige
  • Building stronger bridges between FE and HE within regions
  • Supporting staff and leadership to understand the local landscape
  • Embedding ‘place’ not just in recruitment strategies but in curriculum, partnerships, and missions

This government has made some bold policy pledges regarding access and success. Skills England’s priorities are to develop “a coherent, single authoritative picture of what national and local skills the country requires over the next decade” and then to “develop highly responsive training systems and synergies between employers and educators”. The future impact of devolution and local skills partnerships are yet to be seen, and whether this will lead to an improvement in the diversity of students. But they do provide new opportunities for HEIs to evaluate what they are currently doing, or forge new partnerships and ideas.  

Will a focus on the ‘local' improve university access? The answer, resoundingly, is "yes." GuildHE members have long championed and achieved success in this approach. However, it only works if the sector stops treating ‘local’ as a constraint and instead embraces it as a wellspring of talent, voice, and success, ultimately providing graduates with genuinely better employment options after graduation. 

Staying local isn't about settling; it's about soaring, anchored by community and empowered by relevant, embedded education.