Business schools make the best of UK’s apprenticeship levy

A new UK policy forces businesses with annual wage bills of three million Pounds and more to provide finances for staff training. Many business schools in the UK are now capitalizing on this new “apprenticeship levy”, according to an article in the Financial Times (FT).

Eight in ten business schools have created or are planning to create levy-friendly MBA programmes, the Chartered Association of Business Schools found. For many companies, it is easier to spend the cash on part-time MBA courses than creating their own internal trainings. A poll by education magazine TES suggests that more than 1,400 executives are planning to enrol in programmes in the coming twelve months.

The first university to launch an MBA apprenticeship programme last autumn was Cranfield, which has enrolled 117 students between the ages of 25 and 57, according to the FT. Just under a third of the participants stem from small and medium-sized companies, but the paper also reports that some senior executives from Aviva, Rolls-Royce, Severn Trent Water and BP have joined apprenticeship programmes.