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Letter: Focus on apprenticeships, not on low-value degrees

Director Will Tanner authored a letter for The Financial Times, setting out how apprenticeships serve as a great alternative to low-value degrees. He writes: 

“There are many reasons to expand UK universities but subsidising young people to make themselves poorer is not one of them. It should be unconscionable to university leaders that nearly a fifth of graduates earn less than if they had not gone at all and nearly half of recent graduates are in non-graduate roles […..] The government spends more underwriting the student loan costs of creative arts, business and social studies graduates each year than it budgets for apprenticeships. It is inescapable that we need more good apprenticeships and fewer low-value degrees.”

Read the full letter here.

REPORT
Course Correction: Why we need to reform apprenticeships

Apprenticeships are failing working class school leavers, and will undermine efforts to level up without significant reform.