Burnham skills plans put degree apprenticeships at risk, v-cs say

Andy Burnham’s “false dichotomy” between technical and higher education risks further undermining degree apprenticeships in England, universities fear.

From the start of this year funding was axed for over-21s to enrol on master’s-level apprenticeships, while Keir Starmer’s government removed leadership and management apprenticeships from eligibility for the Growth and Skills Levy.

Advocates of degree apprenticeships, which last between three and six years and combine work and study, say that businesses and universities are continuing to invest in them, but question how sustainable this is.

Added peril is seen as coming from new prime minister Burnham’s pledge to achieve “parity” between academic and technical education.

“Constant policy and funding churn has left employers unsure what qualifications and routes are worth investing in,” said Ellie Russell, the University Alliance’s deputy director of policy.

“The government must avoid setting up a false dichotomy between technical education and universities.”

Referencing Burnham’s recent pledge to “value the hard hat as much as the graduate cap”, Russell added: “In professional and technical universities…many students will be no stranger to a hard hat or a pair of scrubs during their studies and most will work directly with employers before they earn their graduation cap – that distinction is constantly being eroded and reimagined.”

Analysis by the University Vocational Awards Council (UVAC) found that 69 per cent of leading UK universities would continue to offer level 7 apprenticeships this autumn, despite government cuts leaving employers facing an estimated £214 million increase in training costs.

The courses also remain very popular among prospective students. Analysis of the government’s Find an Apprenticeship website by the BBC revealed the number of applicants nearly tripled from 8,100 to 21,800 over the past three years.

This is despite the fact the latest Student Academic Experience Survey, conducted by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) and Advance HE, found that compared with most students a “much higher proportion of students” on vocational courses like degree apprenticeships “would choose an option outside higher education if they had their chance again”.

And over the past three years, the number of positions available via Find an Apprenticeship fell by almost half, from 7,300 to 3,700.

That fall may represent some of the challenges facing businesses when it comes to supporting apprentices.

“Degree apprenticeships help employers build their own talent pipeline, develop job-ready staff and address skills shortages while people earn and learn,” Rachel Hewitt, chief executive of MillionPlus, which represents modern universities, said. “However, employers will understandably be concerned about rising costs and uncertainty.”

Mandy Crawford-Lee, UVAC’s chief executive, said that university and employer support for degree apprenticeships meant that they could no longer be described as “being for other people’s children”.

But she expressed concern that the new Westminster government had “fallen into the trap of bifurcation of the system by assuming that there are certain kinds of programmes for certain kinds of learners”.

“What we’ve got is a government that wants to roll back an apprenticeship system...apprenticeships are not academic, nor are they vocational, they are both,” Crawford-Lee said.

The University of Exeter is the largest provider of degree apprenticeships in the Russell Group and last year supported about 3,900 apprentices across 22 programmes, working with 450 employers over the past decade.

Rachel Johnstone, director of its Centre for Degree Partnerships, said employers were still trying to work with universities on apprenticeships, but expressed concern for the future.

“What we are increasingly seeing is employers becoming more targeted in how they use apprenticeship funding,” she said. “However, there is a concern that organisations are not typically replacing lost apprenticeship opportunities with investment from their broader learning and development budgets.

“As funding becomes more constrained, the result is often fewer opportunities overall rather than a shift to alternative forms of workforce development.”

She added: “If individuals can progress through undergraduate and postgraduate study via a conventional academic pathway, but not through an apprenticeship route, we begin to limit choice, ambition and opportunities for lifelong learning.”

georgia.luckhurst@timeshighereducation.com