Starting as a receptionist at Munday + Cramer in 2017 after finishing her A-levels, 21-year-old Georgia Dear couldn’t have predicted that she’d be training to become a chartered building surveyor less than a year later. But when her managers at the architectural, building surveying and property management firm offered her the chance to study for a degree apprenticeship, she jumped at it. “It was too good an opportunity to turn down,” she says. “I can learn something at university and then a month later it’ll crop up at work, or vice versa. I think doing a degree apprenticeship puts you ahead of people who study full time. You’ve got that work experience already.”
Degree apprenticeships were introduced by the government in 2015 to address the acute skills shortages the UK faces in key industries, such as chartered surveying, aerospace engineering, and nuclear energy. That’s expanded significantly since – recent figures estimate there are now more than 7,000 programmes on offer from at least 100 universities in England. Apprentices spend 20% of the week studying towards a full bachelor’s or master’s degree (a level 6 or 7 qualification), and the rest of the time in paid work. The average starting salary in 2019 was £17,800, and all course fees are picked up by the government and employer.
At Northumbria University, Joe Hedley, assistant director of sales and business development, says there are programmes designed for people entering a profession – in nursing, the police, law and architecture, for example – as well as those for current employees looking to upskill; MBAs, digital marketing, and chartered manager degree apprenticeships have proved particularly popular. Universities work with employers to design programmes that address the industry’s needs. “That back and forth with the employers is hugely important,” Hedley says. “There’s a lot of flexibility to shape [the course] in the vision that they want.”
Degree apprenticeships can also help increase the diversity within an organisation. That was the impetus behind the development of the professional economist apprenticeship at the University of Kent, where professor of economics Alastair Bailey worked closely with the civil service’s Government Economic Service (GES) to create the course. “They realised they drew their applicants from a very narrow range of universities and a narrow band of society,” Bailey says. “Here was a chance to do something different, rebalance GES and to bring those wider insights into policy.”
There were 90 students on the course when it first launched last year. Many are with the civil service, but others work for organisations such as the Bank of England and Civil Aviation Authority. The course is the equivalent of an economics degree but Bailey says the structure of the curriculum has been changed. “We provide theory alongside practical analytical skills in the first year, so apprentices become really useful members of their team within a couple of months.”
Teale Cunningham is currently working as an apprentice within an economics team at the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. He’s been involved with writing briefings, going to meetings with ministers, assessing the economic impact of new policies, and more. “It’s a completely different learning experience to [doing just a degree at university], I think it’s superior actually,” he says. “When you do a university degree you don’t learn a lot of practical skills that employers are really after. And my friends are certainly jealous I won’t end up in £40,000 worth of debt.”
