‘Financial freedom and a university education’: why a degree apprenticeship is the smart choice

When it comes to planning a career, include apprenticeships in your research. Against a backdrop of concerns over the cost of university and the lack of employment guarantees, apprenticeships are increasingly seen as a very appealing option and offer the opportunity to access a range of professional roles across sectors including tech, finance and business.

One option is degree apprenticeships, which combine working with studying part-time at university – giving students the chance to earn while they learn and gain valuable on-the-job training while also achieving a degree. At the same time, the scheme allows companies to recruit new talent while accessing funding to help pay for training.

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How do they work?
For degree apprenticeships, university study is undertaken alongside full-time employment – making it a cheaper option for those who want to achieve a degree without saddling themselves with debt.

“Apprenticeships provide entry points for a range of people into really high-quality careers,” says Martin Stilgoe, director at Digital Native UK. “The great thing about apprenticeships now is they aren’t purely for school and college leavers, they are for all ages. We get a lot of people who are either graduates struggling to get their first job or people looking to cross-train.”

Cat Halstead, who heads up the Apprenticeship Academy at Birmingham-based IT solutions consultants Crimson, agrees, saying as well as school leavers they welcome “career changers” from different industries.

Why choose an apprenticeship?
For many students who choose an apprenticeship, the main reason is financial. Sam Guttridge, 24, is currently in his second year of a BSc (Hons) building surveying degree apprenticeship course with architectural, building surveying and property management business Munday + Cramer. He chose the degree apprenticeship route because he was set on getting a degree, but was concerned about the financial implications of full-time university.

“I wasn’t keen on the idea of having to pay back a student loan or scrape by on wages from a part-time university job. It’s great having financial freedom while also receiving a university education,” he says.

Similarly Iwan Pritchard, 22, who has completed a level 4 data analyst apprenticeship with Crimson and is due to start a digital and technology solutions degree apprenticeship with the company, was concerned about the level of risk of undertaking a degree course with no guarantee of employment at the end. “I didn’t like the idea that you would learn to do something for maybe five years and then by the time you enter the market it’s saturated,” he says.

Practical ways of learning
It’s not all about the cash. For Priyal Bhanderi, currently on the degree apprenticeship scheme working as a digital consultant at Capgemini, it was also about learning in a way that suited her. “I’m a practical learner and like learning on the job and this was a great opportunity to do that,” says the 21-year-old, who joined the scheme straight out of sixth form. “There have been times where I can take a certain topic or module that I studied at university and apply it to the working environment. One of the other things was getting exposure to many different people – the best in the field – and learning from the way they do things.”

“The day-to-day work gives you indispensable first-hand experience that you’d struggle to get on a full-time course, and the university education expands your knowledge in areas that would rarely be touched upon in certain practices,” says Guttridge. “An example of this would be that at work you learn how to deal with and manage client expectations and at university they teach you about the advancements in sustainable construction. The university cannot replicate the experience gained from the handling of clients and, unless the practice specialises in sustainable construction, it is unlikely for an employee to learn or consider these forms of construction.”

Benefits to employers
Apprenticeships also bring benefits for employers. For Crimson, it was an ideal solution to the skills shortage it faced. “We started off with a business problem, which was this digital skills gap in the UK,” says Halstead. “We’re a Microsoft gold partner so we need Microsoft Dynamics consultants and there just simply isn’t enough of that talent in the UK. Our solution was to leverage the apprenticeship scheme to grow our own talent.”

As well as plugging a skills gap, apprenticeships bring other – perhaps surprising – benefits.

“We are finding their desire to learn and progress is having a positive effect on their teams – and they have provided a fundamental level of capacity and support that we had almost forgotten existed in the past few decades,” says Lee Hatwell, director at Munday + Cramer.

The apprentices also share their experiences, he says. “As a result, we are able to see, as a business, new ways of working, allowing our operation to continually improve as well.

“If you’ve got someone who’s been in the business for 20 years they might always approach a problem a certain way,” says Halstead. “But these apprentices don’t have that approach so they come at it from lots of different angles. They’re teaching us as much as we’re teaching them.”