This morning we’re publishing research with the Edge Foundation that seeks to understand whether degree apprenticeships are part of a university’s commitment to widen participation, strategically and operationally.
Degree apprenticeships were seen by the previous government as part of a social mobility agenda, and considered to be of particular benefit for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, research for the Sutton Trust has suggested that this group are least likely to be degree apprentices.
Adults and existing staff are not typically considered a central part of the widening participation agenda – regardless of their background – despite many fitting a broader definition of social mobility by becoming degree apprentices and progressing in their careers, as I explored in a recent report for the University Vocational Awards Council.
Degree apprenticeships are fundamentally a job with training. The employer decides they want a degree apprentice, finds a suitable provider, and then recruits and employs the apprentice. The provider sets out the academic requirements for entry onto the programme, but otherwise typically does not recruit the apprentice. Universities can influence employers and support recruitment, but the final say to employ the degree apprentice is with the employer.
Our new research took a case-study approach, looking at two post-92 institutions in terms of the profile and background of their degree apprentices, the role of degree apprenticeships in their access and participation plans, and most importantly by interviewing staff involved in recruitment and outreach, employer engagement, and policy and strategy at each institution.
In terms of access and participation plans, there was a divergent picture with one university stressing the importance of degree apprenticeships in their provision, and the other merely mentioning them. Neither took the additional step of volunteering widening participation targets that covered degree apprenticeships.
Who we are talking about
The profile of degree apprentices in each university showed that, despite the concern about adults and existing staff accessing apprenticeships, the real difference is around sectors.
In health and social care, upskilling existing staff through degree (and other) apprenticeships is a key part of the workforce plan for the NHS, and this is reflected in the older age of these degree apprentices. These individuals often have relevant work experience and a more sophisticated understanding of the job role for which they are being trained, but some need additional academic support. The profile data suggests that the degree apprentices in health and related sectors at one of the universities were less likely to come from a background where at least one parent had a university degree than their traditional undergraduates.
However, in digital and engineering sectors, the degree apprentices were more similar in age to traditional undergraduates on full-time programmes. This was noted by employer engagement staff, who highlighted that employers in these sectors are keen to employ new recruits as degree apprentices and see this as a way of getting the trained staff they need. This group were more like traditional undergraduates in terms of their experience with academic work, and slightly more likely than full-time students to be from backgrounds where at least one parent had a university degree.
This suggests that adults and existing staff on degree apprenticeships are more likely to fit widening participation definitions than newly recruited young people – but the focus in widening participation is typically on young people.
A selective approach
This all fits with an issue that both outreach teams mentioned – the likelihood of those from high-achieving or private schools being more interested in degree apprenticeships.
One university had been asked to visit one of the most high-achieving schools in the area for the first time – with the proviso that they would only talk about degree apprenticeships (as a Russell Group institution would cover the “going to university” side of things).
The outreach lead from the other institution in our study noted that they often had private school students at higher education events ask them about degree apprenticeships, when they would be less likely to consider the university for a traditional full-time degree programme.
This staff member also reported that the private schools had been providing training for potential degree apprentices in assessment centres and other interview preparation, while some of the state schools they regularly visited had only recently begun to ask about degree apprenticeships.
Another barrier was explaining the challenges of a degree apprenticeship programme to parents and young people. Once the outreach staff were presenting information about degree apprenticeships, there was a balance to be struck between focusing on the benefits – particularly when parents were keen that their children went to university in a more traditional way – and the challenges, which were typically about time and the amount of work.
For anyone, studying alongside working can be difficult, even when the study aligns with the work, but for young people without significant work experience, it can be a big change. Individuals have to meet the requirements of both an employer and a university to become a degree apprentice, and they have to continue to meet both these requirements for the duration of the apprenticeship, and then pass their end-point assessment. While the academic standards in terms of the level of qualification are equivalent, the challenges of a degree apprenticeship for the individual can be quite different.
Get your definitions right
So, how related are widening participation and degree apprenticeships in reality? If we include adults studying at a university for the first time through a degree apprenticeship under a definition of widening participation, then they do align.
But if we only understand widening participation in the context of young people, then degree apprenticeships are simply another part of the higher education landscape.
In many cases, those at more prestigious schools have a greater understanding of degree apprenticeships and are better prepared to meet both the employer and university requirements – making the ambition of universities and some employers to widen participation in degree apprenticeships a challenge.
Widening participation through apprenticeships is a long term goal. It’s also important to think what the term actually means – it should also include anyone who has been disadvantaged by the current expensive full time qualification routes. I run a graduate architecture programme which results in professional registration. At the moment there are distinct groups who can benefit from it – these include graduates in rural areas who want to remain working in a village or small town where they have found stable, congenial work, or those who found and took a good job, perhaps with a developer, before qualifying and are now stuck without professional title. But all this is only a start. Once apprenticeships become more apparent to school leavers and start to become normalised, and appear increasingly in news articles in the profession press and the like, it will become more obvious to applicants and employers alike that this is a decent, respected route for anyone; employers will look earlier for future employees rather than assuming that the system will somehow throw them up, because otherwise the talent will go elsewhere. It’s clear from conversations I have had over the last four years that there are many employers both large and small who care a lot about this. Universities are doing great work in this area but it will take time – and also, of course, renewed commitment from the Department for Education.
DAs becoming popular with elites is a good thing because it means that education based on doing is likely to gain more parity in UK society with other academic subjects – getting your hands dirty becomes a sign of standing rather than lower status.
I am not convinced. Medical students have long had to do practical work as part of their training, but have not thereby suffered a diminution of status. I suggest that the status of an educational program is determined by the status of its destination, not by whether it involves practical work.
It is a really good point that social mobility is not just about school leavers: older adults in their 20s, 30s and beyond progressing to more senior roles in an organisation via accessing higher education either through a degree apprenticeship or undertaking a part-time degree is very important too.
Calls to improve social mobility by restricting access to apprenticeships to under 19s or under 25s only risk unintended consequences in reducing social mobility, aside from the practical impact of potentially closing down an important route for filling public sector workforce shortages given e.g. 42% of Level 6 apprenticeship starts in 2022/23 were on the nurse, teacher, police, paramedic and social worker frameworks.