West Wales: The area where the most people stay in Wales for study
8 May 2024
Owain James
The last (but certainly not least!) in our series of blogs on Wales’s regions: West Wales!
West Wales is the region of Wales that has the lowest rates of students that leave Wales for study, with 27.8% leaving the country for study.
)%20(2).png)
Why?
Building on what we have discussed over the last blog posts, it has the right mix of ‘pull factors’:
- It is the region that is furthest West, and is the only region that doesn’t share a border with England.
- Two of the Local Authorities in West Wales have universities based within them – Swansea University and the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. These alongside the Open University are the top three choices for students from each of the region’s four Local Authorities
- Strong pull from a significant Built-up area (Swansea City)
- Neath Port Talbot has high rates of deprivation according to the Multiple Deprivation Index. It has the lowest rates of people leaving Wales for study of the Local Authorities in West Wales, partly because leaving Wales for study is generally easier for those from wealthier backgrounds.
In addition to these factors, I also think there’s something additional about West Wales’ location and what I often call the ‘Goldilocks’ area. Students who are looking to move away from their local area for study, still tend to not want to move too far away. When I speak to students they often mention looking for places no further than 2-3 hours away from their place of origin and this is backed up by the data – the Universities of England that are nearest to the Welsh border are generally the most popular for students from Wales. For many parts of South East Wales, places like Exeter, Bristol, Bath, Oxford, Reading and London (and their universities) fall within that 2-3 hour radius mentioned. But for West Wales, most of the universities that fall within that radius are actually within Wales itself!
That is why, after the unis that are based in West Wales, the next three most popular unis for each of the Local Authorities in West Wales are the ones based in South East Wales (Cardiff University, Cardiff Metropolitan University and University of South Wales). In this case, the strong transport links East to West actually supports keeping people in Wales!
The next most popular choices (with significant numbers) are Aberystwyth University and the universities of the closest English city, Bristol (University of Bristol and University of the West of England).
But to reiterate the point I made in the last blog post – just because this is the region of Wales with the lowest rates of students who leave the country for study, this doesn’t mean that this figure is low. Four times more students leave their country of origin for study in West Wales than the national average for Scotland.
We still need to connect with the 1 in 4 students from West Wales who leave.
