Degree apprenticeships in New Zealand: from gowns to hard hats
How each corner of New Zealand’s tertiary system could make degree apprenticeships work, if the money, the markets and the egos cooperate.
Degree apprenticeships lay bare the hybrid nature of tertiary education: part ivory tower, part boiler room. Handled poorly, they look like a university dipped in overalls. Done well, they are the modern incarnation of the professional degree: selective, rigorous and visibly useful.
New Zealand, reassembling its polytechnics, reforming vocational education (again) and fretting about productivity, has a chance to make the model its own. That requires each provider subsector (and employers) to play to type, and then play together when it actually helps.
Universities: prestige, with safety boots
Universities should treat degree apprenticeships as an opportunity to demonstrate relevance and raise prestige, not dent it. Think medicine, law, engineering. Nobody doubts that they're vocational, everybody sees them as prestige pathways to jobs and careers.
And the exacting standards applied by employers who need employees to be at the top of their game every day, not just at exam time, ought to strengthen the reputation of degrees.
What to do:
Universities ought to build off their existing work-integrated learning courses and clinical and professional placements to experiment with more tailored offerings.
Use their brand presence and alumni connections to forge high-profile partnerships with leading employers, helping to stem the flow of school leavers to competitors overseas.
Use degree apprenticeships to broaden access, particularly among experienced workers from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Former work‑based learning divisions: plug‑and‑play
The system's sleeper asset is the set of spun-out work-based learning units. These are the people who know how to sign up employers, train mentors and keep dispersed cohorts moving. They bring ready-made employer networks, deep work-integrated learning experience, and the option to deliver integrated solutions for large employers or across a supply chain.
What to do.
Migrate up the qualification framework with new offerings that apply your strength in modularised competency-based assessment.
Use credibility with employers to help them open the door to new workforce development strategies and allow tradespeople to upskill and forge new careers.
Act as the operational arm of degree-awarding partners by recruiting apprentices, streamlining assessment and verification processes and keeping learners engaged.
Polytechnics: regional muscle memory
Reconstituted polytechnics have long been the engine room of pre-trade training and degrees that lead directly to vocations. Degree apprenticeships let them extend new work-based learning units that are coming onstream into degree-level options that offer integrated solutions for learners and employers, making it possible for more people to learn while staying in their regions.
What to do:
Target employers that struggle to recruit skilled workers in the regions and can't afford to release existing staff for extended periods of off-job training.
Leverage the value of new business-to-business marketing teams by offering integrated workforce development solutions for employers.
Use the muscle memory of collaboration to share teaching staff for off-job learning and provide a consistent experience for learners wherever they are.
Wānanga: trust, pedagogy and realised aspiration
Wānanga cater well to Māori learners and whānau, as well as to people from other backgrounds who trust their kaupapa. Degree apprenticeships suit people who cannot, or do not wish to, step out of work or whānau duties in their home regions for years at a time, and they also suit later-life upskilling.
What to do.
Co‑design apprenticeships with iwi, hapū, Māori employers and community providers so the kaupapa, kawa and graduate profile are set locally, not retro‑fitted.
Extend their range of career-integrated options by making greater use of workplace evidence.
Form employer consortia (iwi authorities, Māori SMEs, health and social service providers, councils/CCOs, Crown agencies, conservation and primary sector partners) so small employers can participate without a heavy admin load.
PTEs with degree ambitions: agility as a strategy
Private training establishments that already hold degree approvals, or aim to do so, can demonstrate agility in a new area. Their advantage is speed and flexibility: quicker product cycles and employer-friendly timetables.
What to do.
Identify market niches where degrees are required and employers value your distinctive service or quality offering.
Run the system plumbing others may prefer to avoid, like tailored e-portfolios and employer training.
Professional bodies & industry associations: more than cheering from the sidelines
Professional bodies and industry associations can deepen their role in the workforce development system by helping providers connect with employers, identifying willing partners, and connecting members who have a passion for better education and training. All while lending a reassuring endorsement to parents and academic committees.
What to do.
Position themselves as conductors of the degree apprentice experience.
Complement providers' capabilities with brokers to give employers a one-stop shop and connect prospects to apprenticeship opportunities.
Curate support placements that expose apprentices to a wide range of contexts and even employ apprentices centrally.
Collaboration, but on purpose
Providers need to think carefully about what they should do individually and how best to coordinate. Degree apprenticeships offer first-mover advantages for some by locking up employer relationships—the market share of some work-based learning providers isn't an accident.
But providers will need to think about how best to collaborate – with tight funding and tighter margins for new offerings, sharing costs can help share the risk and unlock reputational, financial and performance gains.
Providers should think about where their distinctive strengths offer scope for collaboration.
Why not use the existing WBL division field networks to mobilise employers and train mentors?
Why not collaborate with professional bodies and industry associations to set up assessment centres for prospective apprentices?
Why not draw on polytechnics' deep regional ties and capabilities in areas where other providers do not operate?
And why not leverage universities’ close relationships with professional bodies to anchor standards, external examining and prestige?
Collaboration should be a comparative‑advantage game, not a committee hobby.