Most teachers and nurses live in their home county after completing their studies
Press release | Date: 03/03/2022 | Ministry of Education and Research
A new report from Statistics Norway shows that people who train to become preschool teachers, teachers, nurses and social workers are more likely to study in their home county and remain there after completing their education. One important reason for this is the access to decentralised higher education.
“We need a lot more people who are qualified to work in schools, daycare facilities and the health and social care services. The report indicates that having higher education provision close to where people live is absolutely essential to being able to provide proper education programmes throughout the country. The government will continue to work to provide even more people with access to decentralised education,” says Ola Borten Moe, Minister of Research and Higher Education.
Statistics Norway used register data to survey where everyone who completed preschool teacher, teacher, nurse, social worker, psychology and medicine qualifications in 2014/15 studied and where they lived two and five years later in comparison to where they grew up. The sample selection included a total of 15,658 graduates.
Here are the main findings from the new Statistics Norway report
- Two and five years after graduating, three out of four preschool teachers lived in the same county that they grew up in. Among the preschool teachers from Hordaland, 90 per cent still lived in their home county after graduating.
- Six in ten graduate teachers lived in the county they grew up in. The largest proportion of graduates that grew up in and completed their studies in the same county can be found in the university counties of Hordaland, Sør-Trøndelag and Oslo.
- Half of all nurses completed their study programmes in their home counties, while six out of ten continued to live in their home county after graduating. Hordaland retained 85 per cent of local nurses.
- More than four in ten of those who graduated with a degree in social work studied in their home county, but, after graduating, 70 per cent lived in their home county.
- The programmes of professional study in medicine and psychology, with few candidates and few educational institutions, show different pattern movements to the larger groups. This is because a relatively small proportion of people are able to complete such studies in their home counties.
- Newly qualified doctors are more likely than other graduates to move anywhere in the country, while many qualified psychologists choose to settle in Oslo.
The majority of those that did not choose to live in the place they grew up after graduating settled in more populous and central regions, primarily the university cities and often in Oslo.