Transforming Global Higher Education Starts with Expanding Apprenticeship Degrees

Dr. Eric Dunker and Professor Tom Bewick make a case for a new international centre bringing together global leaders and practitioners in work-based learning.

Traditional university and college education is at a fork in the road. Since 1945, mass participation in degree-level learning supported what the sociologist Daniel Bell famously called in 1973 “the coming of post-industrial society.”

Professional and higher technical roles expanded in public services. In many advanced economies, the private sector signalled a growing desire for more “knowledge workers,” which led to a golden age of four-year college in the United States and increased university participation in countries like Britain, where over half of under 30-year-olds acquired a bachelor’s degree.

The mainly youth-based, residential, full-time study-based program model appeared to provide a ready-made answer. Backed up Becker’s Human Capital Theory, the idea was that more learning equaled more earning. All students had to do was borrow money to invest in the future by turning their degrees into well-paid jobs. Good salaries would more than compensate graduates for the significant debt they had incurred while studying.

Traditional Higher Education Models Need to Evolve

The problem is that this model no longer holds. Acquiring a degree – while better over a lifetime than not having one – no longer commands the same market rewards they once did. Empirical studies of wage gains from different levels of full-time study are unequivocal on this point. US and UK students are sitting at record levels of debt, around 40% of those who start degrees fail to graduate, and for those who do graduate, around 52% of recent grads are underemployed. Not all degrees are created equal.

Research by the Economic Policy Institute based in Washington, D.C., found that young college graduates’ real average wages have declined since 2010. Similar studies of graduates in the United Kingdom found that up to a fifth are in non-graduate jobs and are paying below median earnings after five years. It begs the question: what if we turned the traditional model of higher education on its head? Instead of “pay and pray” approaches to future career success, we help individuals turn their jobs into degrees. This more demand-focused approach to higher education is better rooted in the skills and productivity needs of the economy. Apprentices who are also undergraduates are both equipped for marketable credentials and freed from student loans. 

The ABCs of A New Model

At Reach University in the United States, and its National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree (NCAD), this is precisely what we are doing. From day one, our apprentices are in paid jobs with reputable employers, securing real-world experience and immediate career momentum. They receive support to achieve a degree relevant to their occupational role, with up to half of their learning delivered on the job, and they graduate with a valued credential and good job with no debt. The apprenticeship degree model follows three main principles as easy as ABC: (1) Affordability, (2) Based in the Workplace, and (3) Credit for On the Job Learning.

Similarly, the UK has pioneered “degree apprenticeships,” whereby undergraduates pursue professional paid careers alongside programmes of accredited formal study. From a standing start in 2017, the numbers achieving a degree and higher level apprenticeships have skyrocketed to more than 300,000 by the end of 2024. Social demand for these popular degrees is outstripping the supply of employers currently offering them. Even with quadrupling degree apprenticeship opportunities, the University Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) reports that more than a third of undergraduates favour a paid work-based model over a traditional student loan-financed degree. 

An International Focus

Spurred by the need to learn from a global network of experts in apprenticeship degree models, we are establishing the International Center for the Apprenticeship Degree (ICAD). Building on the strengths and successes of NCAD, ICAD will bring together global leaders in apprenticeship degrees and work-based learning. In a world of AI, micro-credentials, and the gig economy, policymakers and university faculty are challenged to think differently about their higher education offerings. The old certainties of attracting students, whether domestically or internationally, are giving way to new methods that hold the promise of innovation and necessary change.

By Dr. Eric Dunker, Chief Growth Officer at Reach University and Professor Tom Bewick, Visiting Professor at University of Staffordshire