A new breed of apprentice is finding greater favour with employers than the conventional graduate. Tom Rowley reports
Dreaming spires: a degree from a good university such as Oxford opens doors in some places, but it doesn’t seem to secure jobs Photo: GETTY
Few youngsters had more advantages than Sophie Strang. She attended some of
the country’s best schools: first The Mount, an exclusive London day school,
and then North London Collegiate, the £15,000-a-year alma mater of Anna
Wintour and Esther Rantzen. Like many of her classmates, she achieved
straight As at A-level and won a place at Oxford.
Yet, four years later, she is back at the family home in Totteridge. Eight
months after she graduated from Keble College, the 21-year-old cannot find
work. Her 2:1 in English was not enough to impress employers in her desired
field of film and TV production, and she has received nearly 100 rejection
letters from a range of job vacancies.
“I have done unpaid internships for more than six months,” Strang says. “I
have been rejected from receptionist work and a lot of admin jobs. I don’t
feel a sense of entitlement but I am definitely capable of doing that work.
Employers are receiving hundreds of applications, even for these jobs that
are far from glamorous.”
One in four 21-year-old graduates are unemployed, according to the latest
figures from the Office for National Statistics. And those lucky university
leavers who do manage to find work usually find that their degree is
irrelevant, as The Daily Telegraph columnist Allister Heath pointed out last
week. Indeed, a fifth of recent graduates are working as waiters, check-out
operators, filing clerks or in other retail, catering and secretarial roles.
Nor do those leaving the best universities, like Strang, necessarily find
highly skilled jobs: in the past three years, Oxford has produced more
accounts clerks than management consultants and more bar staff than young
economists.
Yet university remains the default option for many British teenagers, even
after most institutions nearly tripled their annual fees, to £9,000, last
year. In 1982, universities received 171,000 applications, including those
from foreign students. Under Labour, the number of places rocketed with the
then prime minister Tony Blair’s cherished ambition to send half of our
teenagers into higher education. More than 544,000 British students applied
last year, a slight decrease on the year before, but tens of thousands more
than four years ago.
However, as traditional degrees are failing to provide jobs for all in
austerity Britain, a new breed of undergraduate is emerging who combines his
or her studies with an apprenticeship. So-called “higher” apprentices split
their university years between work and education – in the style of the old
''sandwich’’ courses at polytechnics, but with even more time spent in
industry – earning a wage and experience as well as a degree. Some employers
will then pay for their apprentices to study for a master’s degree.
The scheme was launched in 2008 by the government’s Learning and Skills Council and, though little publicised, is proving popular with employers. That low profile is set to change. Today, the Department for Business publishes the first evidence of the scheme’s success: a poll of 500 employers showing that they would rather take on a higher apprentice than a conventional graduate. A wide range of companies offers the apprenticeships, from management consultancies and public relations firms to life sciences and engineering outfits. Last year, 3,700 youngsters embarked on a higher apprenticeship, two-thirds more than the year before. An advertising campaign that launches today is seeking to attract at least 25,000 more young people.
Holly Broadhurst, from Leek in Staffordshire, is one such student, having turned down offers to study a full-time degree in mechanical engineering at universities such as Loughborough and Sheffield Hallam. At 19, she is two years younger than Sophie Strang but has been working ever since she left school last summer.
“I was worried about the fees at university,” she says. “I would have had £50,000 worth of debt and no guarantee of a job at the end of it. This way, I get a job straight away, get paid well and get a degree on top.”
Her employer, JCB, pays for her to attend Sheffield Hallam one day a week. For the rest of the week she works for them as a troubleshooter, using her academic experience to solve customers’ problems.
Broadhurst says her work experience makes her a better student. “It puts everything in perspective,” she says. “There is not someone there with a textbook saying, 'This works like that for this reason.’ I used to think, 'Hang on a minute, I don’t understand.’ Now I see it in real life and think, 'That’s where this theory comes in.’ ”
She insists that missing out on full-time university life is a small price to pay
“There are days when I think of my friends having a whale of a time at university,” she admits. “They are out partying all the time. But is that what university is actually for? Here, I’ve got a job, I’m learning at the same time and I’m having fun.”
Broadhurst’s decision is less surprising when one considers her alma mater, the JCB Academy. The school is named after its principal business partner and is based just round the corner from JCB’s headquarters in Rocester, Staffordshire. It was the first of what are known as university technical colleges, a new type of technical school for 14- to 18-year-olds championed by Lord (Kenneth) Baker, the architect of the National Curriculum. They represent a challenge to the conventional model of a comprehensive, academic education followed by university, and are gaining ground: five are now open and last month the Department for Education approved proposals for a further 13. An expected 27 are to open within two years.
The schools are supported by a range of local companies and a university, with the aim of helping to meet skills shortages in a particular area of business. So while the JCB Academy focuses on engineering, others target biomedical science, health care, construction, design, digital technology, computer science and sport. GCSEs and
A-levels are integrated in eight-week projects devised by the sponsoring firms, which involve testing technical as well as academic prowess.
The first 16-year-olds who joined the school when it opened in 2010 left last summer (the first intake at age 14 leave in 2014). Jim Wade, the principal of the JMB Academy, is proud that the entire first cohort is now either working or in further education and, remarkably, half of that first year group of 32 has chosen a higher apprenticeship. “We were really surprised by the percentage going down that route,” says Wade. “But when you think of it from their perspective, they’re getting their degree alongside training. They are also providing crucial skills those industries need.”
Holly Broadhurst was head girl at the JCB Academy last year. The head boy, Aidan Rogers, is now an apprentice, too, turning down a full-time university place to work for Rolls-Royce on aircraft engine design, while studying for his degree.
“I think apprenticeships should be seen more widely as an alternative to university and not as a dirty word,” he says. “When I was telling my friends I was applying for one, they didn’t think it led through university to master’s level; they saw it as hands-on work. They couldn’t understand that this was what I wanted to do when I could have got into so many good universities.”
Apprenticeships are growing in appeal, with several of the largest graduate recruiters scrambling to set up their own schemes. PwC, the accountancy firm, hired 31 apprentices last year and plans to more than double the number it takes on this year. It says its scheme is the right route for talented students “who are clear about their career path and want to get straight into work”.
Accenture, the IT consultancy, has established a similar scheme. “We’re not going to stop taking on IT graduates but it [the apprenticeship scheme] is providing an alternative for us,” says Bob Paton, Accenture managing director in Newcastle. “University is great for some people but as a country we need to give young people other options.
“We have got some apprentices now who started a university course and then pulled out of it to join us. I can understand why people might in the past have thought an apprenticeship was something to do with becoming a plumber or a bricklayer, but more and more companies are offering these schemes. They are right for bright people with few qualifications but they are also right for people with great A-levels who are considering the university route.”
Meanwhile, Sophie Strang faces an anxious wait after her latest job interview last Friday. She does not regret going to Oxford, but is under no illusion now that a good degree will automatically lead to employment. “Oxford opens doors in some places – especially in small companies where the MD went there, too – but it doesn’t seem to secure jobs.
“In a lot of industries, people who have gone to less good universities but have studied a vocational subject, say TV production, are much more likely to get jobs in that industry than me with my 2:1 from Oxford.”
Many professions still require a conventional degree, but Strang thinks schools should educate pupils not to assume that university is their only option. “When I’m Googling jobs, these apprenticeships come up but I’m not allowed to apply for them because I have a degree,” she sighs. “There is an assumption among middle-class parents that all their friends’ children are going to university, so we have to go, too. But university isn’t right for everyone.”
The scheme was launched in 2008 by the government’s Learning and Skills Council and, though little publicised, is proving popular with employers. That low profile is set to change. Today, the Department for Business publishes the first evidence of the scheme’s success: a poll of 500 employers showing that they would rather take on a higher apprentice than a conventional graduate. A wide range of companies offers the apprenticeships, from management consultancies and public relations firms to life sciences and engineering outfits. Last year, 3,700 youngsters embarked on a higher apprenticeship, two-thirds more than the year before. An advertising campaign that launches today is seeking to attract at least 25,000 more young people.
Holly Broadhurst, from Leek in Staffordshire, is one such student, having turned down offers to study a full-time degree in mechanical engineering at universities such as Loughborough and Sheffield Hallam. At 19, she is two years younger than Sophie Strang but has been working ever since she left school last summer.
“I was worried about the fees at university,” she says. “I would have had £50,000 worth of debt and no guarantee of a job at the end of it. This way, I get a job straight away, get paid well and get a degree on top.”
Her employer, JCB, pays for her to attend Sheffield Hallam one day a week. For the rest of the week she works for them as a troubleshooter, using her academic experience to solve customers’ problems.
Broadhurst says her work experience makes her a better student. “It puts everything in perspective,” she says. “There is not someone there with a textbook saying, 'This works like that for this reason.’ I used to think, 'Hang on a minute, I don’t understand.’ Now I see it in real life and think, 'That’s where this theory comes in.’ ”
She insists that missing out on full-time university life is a small price to pay
“There are days when I think of my friends having a whale of a time at university,” she admits. “They are out partying all the time. But is that what university is actually for? Here, I’ve got a job, I’m learning at the same time and I’m having fun.”
Broadhurst’s decision is less surprising when one considers her alma mater, the JCB Academy. The school is named after its principal business partner and is based just round the corner from JCB’s headquarters in Rocester, Staffordshire. It was the first of what are known as university technical colleges, a new type of technical school for 14- to 18-year-olds championed by Lord (Kenneth) Baker, the architect of the National Curriculum. They represent a challenge to the conventional model of a comprehensive, academic education followed by university, and are gaining ground: five are now open and last month the Department for Education approved proposals for a further 13. An expected 27 are to open within two years.
The schools are supported by a range of local companies and a university, with the aim of helping to meet skills shortages in a particular area of business. So while the JCB Academy focuses on engineering, others target biomedical science, health care, construction, design, digital technology, computer science and sport. GCSEs and
A-levels are integrated in eight-week projects devised by the sponsoring firms, which involve testing technical as well as academic prowess.
The first 16-year-olds who joined the school when it opened in 2010 left last summer (the first intake at age 14 leave in 2014). Jim Wade, the principal of the JMB Academy, is proud that the entire first cohort is now either working or in further education and, remarkably, half of that first year group of 32 has chosen a higher apprenticeship. “We were really surprised by the percentage going down that route,” says Wade. “But when you think of it from their perspective, they’re getting their degree alongside training. They are also providing crucial skills those industries need.”
Holly Broadhurst was head girl at the JCB Academy last year. The head boy, Aidan Rogers, is now an apprentice, too, turning down a full-time university place to work for Rolls-Royce on aircraft engine design, while studying for his degree.
“I think apprenticeships should be seen more widely as an alternative to university and not as a dirty word,” he says. “When I was telling my friends I was applying for one, they didn’t think it led through university to master’s level; they saw it as hands-on work. They couldn’t understand that this was what I wanted to do when I could have got into so many good universities.”
Apprenticeships are growing in appeal, with several of the largest graduate recruiters scrambling to set up their own schemes. PwC, the accountancy firm, hired 31 apprentices last year and plans to more than double the number it takes on this year. It says its scheme is the right route for talented students “who are clear about their career path and want to get straight into work”.
Accenture, the IT consultancy, has established a similar scheme. “We’re not going to stop taking on IT graduates but it [the apprenticeship scheme] is providing an alternative for us,” says Bob Paton, Accenture managing director in Newcastle. “University is great for some people but as a country we need to give young people other options.
“We have got some apprentices now who started a university course and then pulled out of it to join us. I can understand why people might in the past have thought an apprenticeship was something to do with becoming a plumber or a bricklayer, but more and more companies are offering these schemes. They are right for bright people with few qualifications but they are also right for people with great A-levels who are considering the university route.”
Meanwhile, Sophie Strang faces an anxious wait after her latest job interview last Friday. She does not regret going to Oxford, but is under no illusion now that a good degree will automatically lead to employment. “Oxford opens doors in some places – especially in small companies where the MD went there, too – but it doesn’t seem to secure jobs.
“In a lot of industries, people who have gone to less good universities but have studied a vocational subject, say TV production, are much more likely to get jobs in that industry than me with my 2:1 from Oxford.”
Many professions still require a conventional degree, but Strang thinks schools should educate pupils not to assume that university is their only option. “When I’m Googling jobs, these apprenticeships come up but I’m not allowed to apply for them because I have a degree,” she sighs. “There is an assumption among middle-class parents that all their friends’ children are going to university, so we have to go, too. But university isn’t right for everyone.”
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