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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/how-united-kingdom-helps-college-students-into-work/>
"MACCLESFIELD, England — Ishan Goshawk, an apprentice with global
pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, donned a lab coat and safety glasses, and
entered a room filled with robots.
His first stop was a machine programmed to fill dozens of tiny vials with a
compound he needed for an experiment. Everything seemed in order, so Goshawk
went to check on a second robot, a gleaming apparatus that, he noted, cost half
a million pounds (about $620,000). When the first robot finished filling the
vials, Goshawk would bring them here, to test how efficiently drug compounds
can be purified using different solvents.
Most students here and in the United States wouldn’t get access to expensive
equipment like this until graduate school. Goshawk — a 21-year-old
undergraduate student and one of 149 “degree apprentices” employed by
AstraZeneca across the U.K. — started using them his second week in.
“It shows the trust we’ve been given,” said Goshawk, who is working nearly full
time while studying toward a degree in chemical science at Manchester
Metropolitan University that his employer is paying for. By the time he
graduates next spring, he will have earned roughly £100,000 (approximately
$130,000) in wages, on top of the tuition-free education.
Degree apprenticeships like Goshawk’s have exploded across England since their
introduction a decade ago. More than 60,000 apprentices began programs leading
to the U.K. equivalent of bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the 2024-25
academic year, in fields as varied as engineering, digital technology, health
care, law and business.
Close to 90 universities in England and Wales now participate, including elite
institutions like the University of Cambridge. Major British and multinational
companies — Deloitte, Rolls-Royce, Unilever, JP Morgan and Microsoft among them
— have signed on."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
