But, the strive for greater autonomy in the north is rooted in a long and dismal history of neglect, socio-economic struggle caused by de-industrialisation and uneven distribution of funding. While previous governments have failed to adequately address this disparity, the North East is left to deal with high rates of deprivation among its districts.
For many students in the North East, this raises important questions on graduate life in the region and whether there are even opportunities to pursue beyond university. I spoke to several students and graduates around the North East of England to gage whether they were feeling optimistic on their futures in the area under Andy Burnham’s government.
Lailah, a university student from Sunderland, works full-time alongside her remote degree, BA in Sports, Fitness and Coaching. She offers her unique perspective on Andy Burnham and higher education.
While talking to Lailah, she raised concerns around Burnham’s emphasis on the value of apprenticeships and how this will shape the current sparse job-market for graduates. She explained that in the North East and in particular, her social circle, apprenticeships were a common route into work. In fact, many of her friends chose to pursue this type of training over university out of fear of accumulating student debt and for their prospects of being able to afford a home in the future.
These concerns raise questions about whether Andy Burnham truly understands the priorities of students in the North East. When I asked Lailah about this, she recognised that his plans to create affordable housing would be beneficial to young people but otherwise, she felt that there were other aspects of student life that need improvement: networking opportunities.
... more accessible events should be available to young people in the North and in the South.
While Lailah and I talked about this, she mentioned the few networking opportunities in the North East insisting that more accessible events should be available to young people in the North and in the South. We concluded that many local opportunities to network are hidden behind paywalls, such as events taking place within ‘members only’ clubs with steep fees, effectively gatekeeping these opportunities from those who cannot afford them.
My conversation with Lailah offered many interesting insights into her views of Andy Burnham and the reality of student life in the North East. However, despite her efforts to remain optimistic, she is not confident that she will secure a job in her chosen field and is not confident in Burnham to improve the graduate market.
To gain understanding on the graduate side of things, I reached out to Charlie, who I worked with in hospitality while he studied for his Law degree, which he graduated from this summer.
... a huge disparity in opportunities between the North East and other regions.
Like Lailah, Charlie suggested that the job market in the North East is limited. However, he recalls that his search highlighted a huge disparity in opportunities between the North East and other regions. When using graduate job sites, Charlie noticed that changing his location preference to other cities outside of Newcastle opened hundreds, if not thousands more job adverts.
As a result, Charlie does not feel particularly optimistic that he will find a job nearby in the legal sector citing its competitiveness and limited openings available.
The challenging state of the regional graduate job market, poses an important question: ‘will students feel forced to leave their local area to find work in their chosen industry?’ For Charlie, this is especially frustrating as he wishes to remain in the North East unless no longer feasible. After all, he has lived here his entire life and decided to invest four years into his undergraduate degree at a local university.
I was curious as to what the current Labour government could do to ensure that Charlie could stay in the North East. He decided that devolution and more ‘GOV’ jobs would be enough positive change to enable this.
Furthermore, he hopes that Burnham’s plans to invest into northern infrastructure and communities will create more jobs but is sceptical as to how effective that will be seeing as the number of graduates out of work or working in hospitality is so high.
When asked whether he believed that the Prime Minister understood the priorities of university students in the North, Charlie said that he could not confirm without the facts; however, given that Burnham is a Cambridge-educated man who has spent decades in and out of Westminster, he imagines that he does not.
Speaking to Lailah and Charlie provided two different university experiences but revealed a similar outlook. Despite working hard towards their degrees, they both have little faith that Burnham will create any meaningful, positive change to the seemingly formidable job market in the North East.