Edinburgh Napier University

  Higher education-level apprenticeships can provide routes to university degrees for people without the financial resources for traditional degrees. In Scotland, the first cohorts of graduate apprentices began their studies in 2017, including cohorts studying three computing programmes at our university. Our apprentices are full-time, salaried employees, studying university degrees through work-based learning and traditional modules, on campus one day each week. Narrative interviews were conducted with apprentices in their second and third trimesters, to gather context-rich information about the apprentices' backgrounds and their experiences of these new degrees. Apprentices had many reasons for taking this route and diverse pathways into it, from individual plans to their employers offering this opportunity. They had found resources to support their studies: both from their employment and from the bonds they established as a cohort. This paper presents the perspectives of apprentices, focusing on their routes to university and strategies for academic success.