The heads of top British enterprise universities have vowed to thwart government ideas to axe the MBA apprenticeship by splitting the review into two, with the greater part still becoming lined by the schooling programme.
Apprenticeships for senior executives have mushroomed adhering to government reforms to skills funding that pressured employers with once-a-year payrolls better than £3m to set apart an equal to .five per cent of this sum for spending on workplace schooling strategies.
Unhappiness that levy funds had been becoming used in this way, on programmes costing up to £18,000, prompted schooling secretary Gavin Williamson to seek a evaluate into the MBA apprenticeship with an eye to eradicating it from the levy method.
The Department for Instruction has not however formally scrapped the MBA apprenticeship. But in the most recent list of apprenticeship criteria issued by the administering agency, the need to attain an MBA or other masters diploma to total a senior leader qualification has been lower.
Even so, David Oglethorpe, dean of Cranfield university’s faculty of administration, advised the Fiscal Occasions that his establishment would keep on to present an MBA whatsoever the final result of the evaluate.
Beneath Mr Oglethorpe’s proposal, pupils would total a senior leader apprenticeship and then undertake an excess piece of coursework and pay an extra payment to attain an MBA. Some pupils may have to pay this cost, which could be up to £9,000, them selves but it would still only be a fraction of the whole payment.
“I have been battling tooth and nail to say depart it as it is, but this means we could still present the qualification,” Mr Oglethorpe explained.
“The feed-back we get from employers is that it can help them entice and retain key team. A fifth of our ingestion occur from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds and fifteen per cent experienced in no way been to university prior to setting up the programme.”
“The senior leader apprenticeship normal has been mapped on to an MBA curriculum, creating it uncomplicated for us to present an MBA for those people that would like a person,” Mr Oglethorpe explained. “We would have to demarcate the two qualifications but that is rather straightforward to do.”
This way of funding an MBA has rewards, Mr Oglethorpe additional. “Whilst the qualification remains section of an apprenticeship normal, you can’t ask employees to lead to the charge. If you could, it would signify they would have pores and skin in the match.”
Other enterprise faculty heads explained they had been looking at equivalent preparations if the government made the decision to remove the MBA from apprenticeships.
“The MBA is noticed as a considerable thing on a CV so there will normally be an incentive to present a route to finding this by way of the apprenticeship,” John Board, dean of Henley Business College.
“The more substantial hazard is that the government cuts the rate employers should pay for the apprenticeship, which would no for a longer period make it practical for universities like us to present our system. You would then be left with suppliers who only pay lip assistance to the criteria desired for significant-top quality administration schooling.”
The concept of presenting an MBA separately to the apprenticeship also obtained the backing of the Chartered Administration Institute, the accreditation system for administration schooling in the British isles.
“It would set a unusual precedent if the government explained that employers can’t pay for their employees to review for this qualification if that is what they want to do,” Daisy Hooper, the CMI’s head of plan and general public affairs, explained.
“The apprenticeship levy has broadened obtain to the MBA. Limiting this will transfer it again to getting an elitist qualification.”
The Department for Instruction explained: “The schooling secretary questioned the Institute for Apprenticeships and Specialized Instruction to evaluate the senior leader apprenticeships normal to ensure it is conference its aims and gives worth for dollars. The evaluate is ongoing.”