Driving social mobility? Competitive collaboration in degree apprenticeship development

Abstract

Apprenticeship reforms have paved the way for higher education providers, including universities, to become Degree Apprenticeship (DA) training providers, creating new workbased Higher Education (HE) routes. The changes aim to generate a new cohort of skilled individuals to support national economic growth, as well as improve levels of social mobility. This paper focusses on a HE partnership project which resulted in a number of collaborative models for development that address these aims.The paper focuses on qualitative interviews undertaken during the process of creating DAs through a consortium of higher education providers. It considers the collaborative relationships which were built on and which developed across the course of the short-term project. It assesses the concept of competitive collaboration and its link to social mobility.The paper considers the various manifestations of collaboration which supported the DA developments in a competitive environment: collaboration as embedded; collaboration as negotiation and as a driver for social mobility or social equality.The uniqueness of this large collaboration of colleges and universities is that it has been a vehicle to raise the status of apprenticeships, provide opportunities for development of new DA curricula and enable practitioners to establish this as a new route into HE. The paper questions current but limited knowledge about the impact of DAs on social mobility and equality.

Degree apprenticeships: delivering quality and social mobility?

“…In “Responding to the NHS and social care workforce crisis: the enhancement of opportunities through collaborative partnerships”, Hanney and Karagic (2019) provide a comprehensive review of the multiple political and economic drivers surrounding the skills crisis in health and social care and describe how an extensive collaboration has forged a community of practice in response. The paper observes how collaborative synergy can be a force for quality enhancement and in this way supports issues raised in this special issue’s third paper (Bradley et al , 2019). The authors set out a scenario where further and HE providers are comfortable operating delivery in the same space; where foundation degrees and higher apprenticeships sit hand in glove and where quality enhancement is aligned to meet employer need.…”

“…In the next paper, Bradley et al ’ s (2019) “Driving social mobility? Collaborative competition in degree apprenticeship development” takes it lead from the dual policy objectives of apprenticeship reforms in England: to generate a new cohort of skilled individuals to support economic growth as well as improve levels of social mobility.…”

Degree apprenticeships in the UK higher education institutions – are they viable?: Integrative literature review

“…Konstantinou and Miller (2020) and Schedlitski (2019) proposed reflection improves professionalism, professional identity (Leek, 2020), and apprentice identity, as it requires practitioners to keep challenging existing practices. Evaluating the individual's impact, a research gap exists for the effect of apprenticeships on social mobility (Bradley et al. , 2019; Smith et al.…”

“…Widening parƟcipaƟon support (Daley et al, 2016;McKnight et al, 2019;Higgs, 2022;Smith et al, 2021;Sevens et al, 2021) Social mobility (Bradley et al, 2019, Smith et al, 2021 University's mission promotes WIL for working students applying theory with pracƟce.…”

Varieties of capitalism and the base of pyramid population segment in affluent economies: Discussion on entrepreneurship financing and skills development

“…For example, the Entrepreneurship Competence Framework (EntreComp) developed by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission on behalf of the Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL), has been designed to improve the entrepreneurial capacity by providing holistic overview of needed competences and learning outcomes (see Bacigalupo et al, 2016). Examples can be found also in the national level, such as in the introduction of apprenticeship degrees in UK that are receiving significant public funding at the same time when other academic degrees have rather high fees (Bradley et al, 2019). In CMEs including Nordic economies, national and regional governments are progressively attempting to develop vocational degree programmes targeted at entrepreneurship (Chiu, 2012), and in countries like Finland entrepreneurship is already a natural part of primary school education (Lepistö and Rönkkö, 2013;Hietanen, 2015;Deveci and Seikkula-Leino, 2018).…”