A deep dive into the salary of Degree Apprenticeships
Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash
Starting Salaries
The average degree apprenticeship will start at around £17,000- £24,000 a year salary, this will vary upon company. For example the BBC will pay their degree apprentices £20,475, Jaguar and Land rover £24,480, Rolls Royce £20,735, Bentley £23,361 and Mini £18,152. As you can see they can vary quite a bit and a lot of companies do not publisice their salaries so it is not always easy to know how much you will earn. You can use sites such as “https://www.ratemyapprenticeship.co.uk/” and looking at reviews of the apprenticeships where they talk about their salary.
Do salaries increase?
Most, if not all, companies will increase your salary throughout your apprenticeship as you get more and more experienced with them. Often companies won’t outline this to you. However some do, for example Rolls Royce outline their salary progression “£20735, £23118, £26412, £30176 and £34476” with the fifth year being only as a finance proffesional. This salary increased by £9441 over 4 years, or an increase of around 45%. This shows there is significant room for growth in your salary if you feel it is not enough initially. For example if you apply this percentage increase to Jaguar Land Rover’s initial salary of £24,480 you will finish on £35,496 in your fourth year. Of course they might not increase that much as the base salary is higher, but they could be around this figure.
How much will I be able to spend/save?
This is a question I personally was very interested in. So I created a spreadsheet on exccel where I took the base salary of the positions I had applied for and took into account national insurance, income tax, a 3% pension and accomodation (if needed). Below is an example of the base salary of JLR. If you want to do this yourself just search up on youtube or the internet how to calculate your NI, tax deduction etc.
This shows if I were to move away to work with JLR, I would have £213.95 a week to spend on food, petrol and social activities. This probably would leave me with more than enough for these expensives and I would be able to save quite a bit. However if I lived close to the JLR apprenticeship I would be able to save an extra £8632 (approximate) per year, this would be a massive increase in my savings for the future. I also did the same process for Rolls Royce’s salary of £20,735, I found I would have £168 per week in the first year, if I had to rent a place there, and by the final year I would have £288 per week to spend/save.
How can I find salaries?
Check the job description.
Check company website for apprenticeship salaries
Use websites such as “https://www.ratemyapprenticeship.co.uk/” “https://uk.indeed.com/” “https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Community/index.htm” who present apprenticeship reviews or average salaries.
Email the employer about the salary (find email on their website).
So how reasonable is it to move away from home with a degree apprenticeship?
If you do not live in an area that has an abundance of degree apprenticeships then you might think you can’t get one. However, as seen from above you can pretty comfortably live away from home while doing a degree apprenticeship. Although you may find it difficult to save money that people who are living at home in an apprenticeship. But by being able to move away you give yourself the oppurtunity to get the perfect degree apprenticeship for you. Some companies are acknowledging this struggle of potential apprentices and are increasing their salaries to compensate for this for example Jaguar and Land Rover have increased their salary well above market average to allow apprentices to move away from home to work with them.
Where do I stay if I move away?
I am yet to see a company pay for their apprentices to re-locate, so do not expect this at all. However most of them will at-least provide you with advide about local accomodation and prices. They are likely to also reccomend you rent with other apprentices working with you to cut costs by adding you and the other apprentices to a private group after you all accept your offer. What some top degree apprentice providers have done recently is partner with student accomodation, where you will be able to live in student accomodation like a university student (you will still have to pay rent), to find out if the degree apprenticeship you are aiming for does this, just send an email to their careers/apprenticeship team (find email on their website) and ask. They will be more than happy to help.
Degree Apprenticeship salary growth
Looking ahead to the future, degree apprenticeship salaries are growing faster than graduate jobs. “The average starting wage for degree apprenticeships has increased 12% over the past year from £16,000 to £17,875, while pay for graduate roles has increased by just 1.25% from £27,654 to £28,000.”1 I will do a deeper article into this in the future, where I talk about the growth and future of degree apprenticeships.
I hope you have found this helpful, make sure to email and contact the employers if you have more questions for them, like I said they will be happy to help, or leave a comment for me or current degree apprentices who can help. Please consider subscribing and sharing to other students and teachers :)