Degree Apprenticeships The Sixth Formers’ Guide
The ‘earn as you learn’ route to a debt-free university degree Martin Birchall, editor of The Sixth Formers’ Guide to Degree Apprenticeships , explains how degree apprenticeships offer an increasingly-attractive alternative to the traditional university experience. E very year, more than 300,000 students apply to university to study for a degree after sixth form – it’s a nerve-wracking time for the nation’s school-leavers and
18-year-olds begin a salaried degree apprenticeship, with the tuition fees for their undergraduate degree paid in-full by the employer they join. Degree apprenticeships were first introduced in 2015 and are now available at more than three hundred employers, including roles in engineering, accounting, technology, healthcare, business & management, law, banking & finance and teaching. “By doing a degree apprenticeship, our apprentices are employed from day one and don’t have to compete for a graduate job after university,” explains Richard Hamer, Director of Education & Skills at BAE Systems. The global defence and aerospace company is currently one of the UK’s largest degree apprenticeship employers and is expecting to take on more than 400 new degree apprentices in 2025 for roles including aerospace & nuclear engineering, information & technology, and project management. “Our degree apprentices typically start on a salary of about £23,000 and that rises to around £35,000 by the end of the five-year programme. And there’ll be another lift when they move into their first job, on completion of the apprenticeship,” says Hamer. It’s not unusual for degree apprentices to be paid
their parents. As well as the competition for places at their universities of choice, school-leavers face rising tuition fees, record student debts and uncertain prospects in the post-university graduate jobs market too. The latest official figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) reveal that fewer than 45% of new graduates find full-time graduate-level employment within 15 months of completing their degree. And a survey of over 14,000 graduates from the ‘Class of 2024’ by High Fliers Research shows that average students debts at the end of university are now £44,000. Worse still, three-quarters of students only make it through their studies with considerable additional financial support from their parents, an eye-watering average of £16,000 per student. But for one group of sixth form school-leavers, student debt and finding a well-paid graduate job won’t be an issue. Each year, over three thousand
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