Edinburgh Napier University prides itself on being an innovative university, producing highly employable graduates - see more about our postgraduate courses here. With 93.2% of our students in work or further education within six months of graduation, we seem to be on the right track.

We're continually striving to give our students an even better chance of getting the job they want, which is why we're opening the floor to new ideas. We're challenging you to come up with an idea to improve graduate employment opportunities with some fresh thinking on how to connect students with employers, and give graduates the edge in an increasingly tough job market. 

To make things easier, we have three themes to give you a little inspiration - Networking, Technology and Social.

NETWORKING 
How do we best connect students with local and national businesses?

TECHNOLOGY
How can we use apps and other online tools to give students greater employment opportunities?

SOCIAL
How can we use social media and events to help graduates improve their employability?  

To enter, simply "FOLLOW" the challenge and enter your submission. This needs to include a 100 words summary of the idea, and any supporting media like an image, video, website or ZIP file.

Judges will be looking out for ideas that score highly in Creativity, Strategy, Engagement, Innovation, Feasibility and Scalability - and the creator of the idea with the highest overall score will receive £3000 towards their postgraduate course fees at the university.

We'll also be asking the public what they think, and the winner of the Popular Vote will win a Kindle e-reader and £100 of Amazon vouchers. 

We'd like to share the ideas where possible to see which best strike a chord with students, staff at the university and the public. We'll even look at implementing the best idea if we can. This is your chance to make a positive change for student life!

The Open Minds challenge is a simple one: to make academic life better.

Simply "FOLLOW" the challenge, then submit your idea. Remember to look at the judging criteria on the homepage, to make sure you've covered them as best you can.

Entries take one form - a small synopsis of around 100 words. However, if you'd like to provide us with other documents and media to support your ideas, these can be submitted too. 

We'll accept a number of formats: YouTube / Vimeo link, PDF, Microsoft Word or Zip file. Just remember that whatever you include, it must be clear to the judges what it is and how it could open doors to new opportunities. 

• Creativity
  Is this an idea everyone will wish that they had thought of?
• Strategy
  Is this idea solving a unique problem?
• Engagement
  Is this idea going to motivate people to get involved? Does it reward interaction?
• Innovation
  Is this idea a "first"?
• Feasibility
  Can the idea be realised within a reasonable timeframe and budget?
• Scalability
  Can this idea be rolled out in a big way?