Tories would swap ‘rip-off’ degrees for apprenticeships

The Conservatives have promised to scrap some university courses in England to help fund 100,000 apprenticeships per year if they win the July election.

The party says it would replace the “worst-performing” degrees that it considers a “rip-off” because of high drop-out rates and “poor” job prospects.

Labour criticised the government over a decline in the number of new apprentices.

It said it would prioritise “gearing” apprenticeships towards young people.

The Liberal Democrats said the government had treated apprentices like “second-class workers”.

The Conservatives said former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ambition to get half of young people going to university had “led to low-value degrees ballooning”.

In England, the Office for Students (OfS) can already investigate and sanction a university – for example with fines – if it falls below certain standards.

The Conservatives say they would introduce a new law allowing the independent regulator to go further and completely close the poorest-performing university courses.

They would be determined by drop-out rates, job progression and future earnings potential, the party said in a press release.

Speaking at a railway depot in Cornwall on Wednesday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak added: “University is great and it makes a fantastic option for young people, but it’s not the only option… And what we do know is that there are university degrees that are letting young people down.”

Schools Minister Damian Hinds told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there had been a “huge increase in quality” in apprenticeships under Conservative governments. Now was the time to “make sure we’re maximising the available opportunities for young people” and supporting businesses with the new scheme, he added.

Mr Hinds said it would not be “right or fair” on current students to say which courses his party considered to be “rip-off” degrees, and said it varied by individual courses rather than by subject.

“Take computer science – you get earnings outcomes from young people studying computer science degrees which will range from £18,000 to £80,000.”

The Conservative Party estimated that the government would save £910m by 2030 if it scrapped courses that taught 13% of students.

It said this was because the taxpayer “offsets” student loans when graduates do not earn enough money to pay them back. The logic here is that removing courses that lead to lower earnings would result in less unpaid debt.

It said its savings would allow the government to invest in 100,000 more apprentices per year by the end of the next Parliament.

The Conservatives’ calculations are based on the assumption that 75% of the students who would have enrolled on those courses would go into employment or apprenticeships instead.

However, there is no limit on the overall number of students that universities in England can admit – so universities could recruit students to other degree courses if some were closed.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said this meant it was “unclear” whether savings from scrapping “low-value” courses would be large enough to fund the Tories’ expansion plan.

Birmingham City University (BCU) vice-chancellor, Prof David Mba, said the prospect of more apprenticeships was “great” but he did not want that to be at the expense of university courses.

He said the idea that a degree was a rip-off if it did not reach a minimum earning threshold was “bonkers”, particularly for creative subjects.

“Let’s look at my Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. We train musicians, pianists, over three years; they end up with a degree and it will take them probably a while, as a creative out freelancing, to build up a career and to reach certain earning levels that might be commensurate with what the government think it should be,” he told BBC News.

Prof Mba said many of his students commuted from deprived parts of the West Midlands, and that BCU’s courses – including its degree apprenticeships – offered “social mobility”.

Sabeeha Anium, who studies computer science at BCU, said her degree was “not a rip-off” as she “gets to learn different things” every day.

Speaking to the BBC on her lunch break, she added: “Every single degree is valuable.”

Aaryan Shabbir, who is on the university’s accelerated two-year digital marketing course, said he would welcome seeing more apprenticeships because of concerns around student debt and finding a job post-degree.

He added: “If I’d [known] more about apprenticeships I would’ve done an apprenticeship.”

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers welcomed the announcement and said it hoped other political parties would “match this additional funding”.

Chief executive Ben Rowland said: “Whichever party finds itself in government, there will need to be a commitment to encouraging more employers [to] offer apprenticeship opportunities.”

Neil Carberry, chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation trade body, said the announcement was “using apprenticeships to denigrate university courses, when we need both to flourish if we’re going to grow”.

Apprenticeships are funded partly by the taxpayer as well as by the apprenticeship levy, which is essentially a tax paid by bigger businesses. Those firms, as well as smaller ones, can access the cash to spend exclusively on training apprentices.

Mr Carberry said the levy made apprenticeships more expensive to deliver – particularly lower-level apprenticeships aimed at younger people – so firms were better off if they did fewer of them.

He said while higher-level apprenticeships were replacing degrees for some people, they did not help people who would not have gone to university and needed a different route to skilled work.

Apprenticeship dropout rates in England are about one in two.

Just over half (54.6%) of apprentices completed and passed a final assessment in 2022-23 – well below the government’s 67% target by the end of 2024-25.

Asked about the dropout rate, Mr Hinds said: “It is true that some young people start an apprenticeship and then they don’t [finish it], and then they take a different turn in their career. When they do that, they’ve accumulated of course skills and experience in that job, and they’ve been earning.

“That has long been true in apprenticeships.”

Labour’s shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said the announcement was “laughable” because the Conservatives had “presided over a halving of apprenticeships for young people”.

She reiterated her party’s promises to introduce technical excellence colleges aimed at training workers for local industries, and to reform the apprenticeship levy into a “growth and skills levy”, which the party says would allow businesses to spend up to half of their levy payments on “more flexible training courses”.

Munira Wilson, education spokeswoman for the Liberal Democrats, said the Conservatives had “broken the apprenticeship system” and “urgent reform is needed”.

“The shockingly low pay for those on apprenticeships will remain, doing nothing to encourage more people to take apprenticeships up or tackle soaring drop-out rates,” she said.

Additional reporting by Branwen Jeffreys and Hope Rhodes.