A Degree Apprenticeship Is Harder Than Anyone Tells You, But It’s Worth It

Not many of you may know, but I’m actually a degree apprentice. I’m studying Responsible Business Management at the University of Exeter while working full-time as Operations Manager here at FE News.

This week is National Apprenticeship Week. There’ll be no shortage of celebration posts, stats about how brilliant apprenticeships are, and the usual LinkedIn fanfare about how apprenticeships changed someone’s life. Look, apprenticeships are brilliant. But I wanted to use this week to be honest about what it’s like to be on one.

The Bit Nobody Warns You About

I’m allocated one day a week for study. That’s the deal. The reality is, I need roughly an extra day on top of that, usually on the weekend. Assignments, portfolio work, and reading don’t fit neatly into a single day, no matter how well you plan.

I’m not alone. A study published in the Journal of Education and Work found that degree-level apprentices described completing their studies as “almost impossible” given the allocated 20% off-the-job time. Some apprentices reported managing only 1 to 6 hours of actual study during their protected time, with the rest consumed by work demands.

The government requires apprentices to spend at least 6 hours per week on off-the-job training. That’s protected time. It’s a legal requirement.

The reality on the ground is that it rarely covers what’s needed at a degree level. This isn’t a complaint. I knew what I signed up for, but if you’re considering this route, you need to understand what you’re choosing.

There’s a common assumption that degree apprenticeships are for 18-year-olds who didn’t fancy university. The data tells a completely different story. According to the House of Commons Library, only 13% of level 6 degree apprenticeship starters are 18. Over half are aged 25 or older. Most people on my course are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. I’m one of the youngest.

This route is growing fast. Degree-level apprenticeship starts grew to over 60,000 in 2024/25, a 20% increase on the previous year, and now make up 17% of all apprenticeship starts. This isn’t a niche route anymore. It’s one of the fastest-growing parts of the skills landscape.

This isn’t an alternative to freshers’ week. It’s full-time work while being a full-time student. If you want the traditional university experience, the social life, the ‘independence’, go to university. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but if you want to earn, learn, and build something real inside an actual organisation, this is the route. Both are great, but they are fundamentally different experiences, and being honest about that helps people choose the one that is right for them, rather than assume one is better than the other.

What Employers Need to Understand

You’re not just hiring for a qualification. You’re hiring someone who’s been embedded in your business while earning it. Not in the abstract, “I studied a case study about a company like yours” way. In the “I need to apply this theory to your actual operations, your actual customers, your actual problems” way.

My course is business management. Everything I study, strategy, operations, leadership, gets filtered through into FE News. That’s the point. The learning isn’t theoretical. It’s applied. It creates something distinctive, someone who’s been thinking critically about your business for years before they even finish their qualification.

85% of apprentices remain in full-time employment after completing their apprenticeship, and 60% continue with the same employer. A study from the Centre for Economics and Business Research found that for every £1 spent on apprenticeships, the wider economy benefits by £21. These aren’t figures that suggest a short-term experiment. They point to a route that delivers real, lasting value for employers.

My ask for employers:

If you’re hiring a degree apprentice, understand what you’re actually getting. You’re getting someone who will think differently about your organisation. Who will question processes, suggest improvements, and bring academic frameworks to real-world problems. That’s incredibly valuable, but only if you give them the space and support to do it.

What It Actually Gives You

The thing that surprised me most about this route is how it changes the way you think at work. Studying business management while running operations means I’m constantly looking at what we do and asking how we can do it better. It’s not just about completing assignments. It gives you a lens for every decision, every meeting, every project, a way of thinking about problems that comes from combining the two.

That’s the bit that doesn’t show up in the stats, but matters enormously. You’re not just getting an employee who happens also to be studying. You’re getting someone whose study is directly shaping how they contribute to your business, in real time. The University of Exeter is the second-highest-performing apprenticeship provider in the country for higher-level achievement, with an 80.9% completion rate compared with a national average of 60.5%. I think a big part of that is how well the programme connects academic learning to genuine workplace application.

Why It’s Worth It

I want to finish with something that puts all of this into perspective.

Someone on my course has been diagnosed with terminal stage 4 cancer. They’re still studying. Not because they need the qualification. Not because their employer requires it. They chose a degree apprenticeship because it allowed them to study without incurring any costs, as they genuinely want to learn.

That’s stayed with me. Because when you strip away the stats, the policy debates, and the branding around NAW, that’s what this route is really about. It’s about people who want to learn and grow.

Yes, you will work evenings. Yes, you will work weekends. Yes, you will sometimes sit in a meeting on Tuesday and write an assignment about it on Saturday. You will also develop in ways that neither a full-time university nor full-time work alone can offer.

When I first started, people asked me if I was an advocate for apprenticeships, and I thought it was a no-brainer, you get a free degree, duhh, but I’ve realised that it’s so much more, and it’s worth every painstaking weekend.

By Danny O’Meara, Operations Manager at FE News