A report showing the impact of degree apprenticeships aims to urge UK politicians to persist with employer levy funding, “not ruin something the world is adopting”, and to provide evidence dispelling notions, such as that of a middle-class takeover, which are “divorced from lived experience”.
Degree apprenticeships: voices from the frontline – based on a survey of 1,073 degree apprentices, 148 employers and 248 teachers and trainers, and funded by the Quality Assurance Agency – includes a finding that 82 per cent of degree apprentices say their qualification “is facilitating their career progression”.
But it also finds that 47 per cent of apprentices do not think that degree apprenticeships are held in the same esteem as non-apprenticeship courses, and 22 per cent do not agree that their courses are valued within their workplace – with 65 per cent of those who strongly disagree enrolled on the police constable degree apprenticeship.
Raheel Nawaz, lead investigator on the report and pro vice-chancellor for digital transformation at Staffordshire University, one of the largest providers of degree apprenticeships, said media coverage of degree apprenticeships has often been “really divorced from the lived experience”.
