The Benefits of a Degree Apprenticeship in Investment Banking: Goldman Sachs launches Masters Degree Apprenticeship with Warwick University. Hear from Ayaz Haji, MD at GS, Stuart Croft, Warwick Vice Chancellor & Peter Estlin, Assc. of Apprentices

A new initiative between Goldman Sachs and Warwick University promotes equal access to opportunity and social mobility through a new Masters Degree Apprenticeship.

Ayaz Haji, Global Head of Data Products for Core Engineering at Goldman Sachs, is active in championing D&I programmes for GS. In his role, he noticed a skills gap in under-represented students, leading him to initiate the idea of a GS sponsored degree apprenticeship with University of Warwick. Ayaz, Managing Director at GS, thinks that the "Master’s apprenticeship is the best of both worlds combining computer science and data with on-the-job learning, essentially creating a leadership acceleration programme".

Ayaz is joined by Stuart Croft, Vice-Chancellor and President at Warwick University, who have worked together to create a tech focussed degree apprenticeship to promote social mobility. Sir Peter Estlin, Chair of the Association of Apprenticeships and previously City of London Lord Mayor in 2018/19 also joins the conversation as a champion of both digital skills and D&I, and promoting the apprenticeship journey.  Previously he was CFO at Citi, Barclays, Salomons and a partner at PWC.

Work in Fintech co-founder Matt Cheung hosts the podcasts which touches upon a variety of topics, ranging from the impact of degree apprenticeships to the future of learning. The group talk about how partnership programs, such as the collaboration between University of Warwick and Goldman Sachs, can create an equity of opportunity, challenging the traditional route of attaining a degree and fostering inclusivity.

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Transcript

Matt: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody. This is Matthew Cheung from Work in FinTech. And today I'm super excited to talk with leaders in the fields of FinTech learning and diversity and inclusion. So we're going to learn about degree apprenticeships, why diversity and social mobility are important and to learn about a newly launched Goldman Sachs and University of Warwick masters apprenticeship. Both my parents are immigrants so social mobility is personally important to me. So today we have some amazing guests. Ayaz,can introduce yourself? 

Ayaz: Thank you, Matt. My name is Ayaz. I'm a managing director at Goldman Sachs where I'm responsible for our data products across core engineering, but that's just my part-time job. My main job at Goldman, which I'm most passionate about is is really championing inclusion and diversity within our engineers and our [00:01:00] engineering division. And we've run a number of programs over the years to do that. And I'm looking forward to talking a bit more about that today. 

Stuart: Hi, I'm Stuart Croft. I'm the Vice Chancellor at the University of Warwick, and we've been working closely with Ayaz to develop this new program. We're going to talk about in a few minutes time. Warwick is a big institution. We're about 30,000 students all in now. And we've been growing over the course of the last few years. About 40% of our students are international. We're a big global institution, but we'd be working incredibly hard on diversifying the routes into our university for English, British students, from a variety of different backgrounds and delighted to be able to say that through the last year of the pandemic, we were awarded by the Sunday Times, university of the year for teaching quality, which I think says a huge amount about actually the flexibility and forward-looking way in which we try to approach education.

Peter: Hello, I'm Peter Estlin. I am,amongst other things, the chair of the Association of Apprentices, which a newly formed body over [00:02:00] the last year or so very much promoting apprenticeships here in the UK, but focusing very much on the apprentice journey themselves. So it's an association for apprentices led by apprentices, but my background fortunate to be in Lord Mayor of the city of London in 2018-19. Having a career in banking and finance operating in many countries. So I've had the good fortune, I think, to look at different cultures and different experiences. So, great to be here, Matt and look forward to the conversation. 

Matt: So let's kick off. So question about Ayaz and Stuart. Can you give us a high level summary of what the degree apprenticeship and partnership is about and why you set it up?

Ayaz: Yeah, so I can start and then maybe Stuart can add in. So I think this came about from a few different angles, actually. So one is like yourself, Matt, you know, I was, I was the first in my family to go to university. A career in finance was just something I was not aware of. I was very lucky that a friend of mine at university mentioned it [00:03:00] and that light bulb went off. And I'm very, I'm eternally thankful to that person today because they've affected me, changed my life. And if that conversation hadn't happened, literally wouldn't be sitting here today. And that showed me how fragile, like, you know, careers are really, particularly for people who come from less privileged backgrounds, but the other, the other angles to this from a kind of Goldman side, we've been doing a lot around diversity and inclusion. And one of the most successful programs we run is this Africa recruiting program where we go to Ghana, Nigeria more recently. And we recruit from the universities there. And I thought, you know, this is a great program and tremendously successful. And I was speaking to some of our black community internally and they said, yeah, it's all great. But what about us? I was like, what do you mean what about? And they said, what about the UK? There's tons of underprivileged students in the UK who just don't have a routine. [00:04:00] And so that got me thinking, how do we, how do we really develop. And I'm super excited to partner with Warrick because I think, you know, as Stewart said, Warrick share a lot of this ambition in this space, but also the location of work for Goldman is perfect because we just opened up Birmingham office or earlier this year. And so Warrick just gives us that, that great pivot in terms of, you know, our base in London, but then also looking at. Further up North, which I think is incredibly strong, right. As a talent pool. And we've already seen that in just in the few months that our office has been opened. That's really the background from our perspective. So we reached out to Stuart and he was incredibly supportive and accommodating. So it was great. 

Stuart: I've got a, a similar story. I think there's probably some, some common themes between all of us this morning. I'm also the first in my family to go to university. Parents grandparents and so on all left minimum school age. And so the whole idea of university was a complete mystery. It's just the way that you said. But the difference for me was my [00:05:00] grandmother said that the solution is education. She didn't have any education. She left the age of 14, but she said the solution is education. You must work and get yourself to university. She had no concept. She had never been even on the site of any university ever, but she was absolutely determined and nagged me every Saturday morning to get to that place. I think one of the things about Warrick, moment, a comment about this later on as well, is that story that we've just told is a story repeated over and over at Warrick is one of those places that was set up in the sixties specifically to try as an institution to connect with those families as people, as individuals that talent, which did not traditionally go to university and therefore did not have access to the kind of careers that they deserved. And therefore the economy itself was not going to really grow and develop an emerging the way in which I think everybody wanted it to, to do as we've developed this great apprenticeship program, digital and technology solutions and it really, the point of it is to do exactly what it says on the tin. It's about bringing in people and [00:06:00] helping them to work, devise, develop technology, enabled solutions to support customers, whether internal or external. And the thing about a degree apprenticeship is it is something that has to be connected with the employer. It has to be something of value to the employer. Of course, it's an academic standards, but it's absolutely about application as well. We spent quite a lot of time trying to mesh together the apprenticeship standards and the academic work on the one hand and what that will actually mean in the workplace. They're not easy things to put together, degree apprenticeship programs, but they shouldn't be-- they should be real. They need to have real value for the employer. And of course, real value for the individuals, the employees due to go through those roots. 

Matt: Thanks, Stuart and Ayaz. I guess then from a broader apprenticeship perspective, Peter, in your role as chair of the association of apprentices, in my experience, I'd never heard about a degree apprenticeship until about six months ago when someone mentioned-- a student that I'm mentoring saying that [00:07:00] he applied for a degree apprenticeship with Jaguar land Rover. And I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. And I haven't heard of it again since when I as mentioned this to me. And I think traditionally, a lot of people might think of apprenticeships with hands-on trades, like being a plumber or, or something like that. So are apprenticeships in professional industries, more common than what I think they are? And why would someone choose an apprenticeship over an academic route or going to university? 

Peter: Well, it's a great question because I mean, history is, is in many ways a great source, great source of information. I mean, we've had apprentices for a thousand years and you're absolutely right. Historic apprentices were largely our craft apprentices because that was the growth of the economy in the middle ages, et cetera. The reality is that the 20th century and increasingly now 21st century is being defined by largely a service industry. So whilst we still have those crafts and they're very valuable that they are relatively small intervals.So in fact, if we look at the, you know, the [00:08:00] 719,000 apprentices that we have in the country today, the 80% of those apprentices are either doing a business management, actually healthcare or engineering and technology manufacturing. So the crafts actually sadly are a small proportion because we're a service-based economy. And I totally agree with what Stuart's saying. And in fact, Doug Richard, who wrote the Richard reports back in 2012, apprenticeships, the one fundamental of apprenticeships, their jobs, their real economy jobs that actually are creating value. Not only for the individual, who's fulfilling them, but for the businesses they employ. A lot of this is a PR exercise because in practice, no disrespect, but we've opened promoted sort of universities as, as a route to the workplace. Whereas the real advantage of apprenticeships is you earn and learn at the same. The reality is, and they are staggered in a way that clearly we're encouraging more young people to take on higher apprenticeships because there's more skill there. There's more value to [00:09:00] them. There's more value to, to, to the employer. Um, and so we are encouraging more people to do what's called level four, level five, level six, level seven. And in that way, as I said, they earn and learn at the same time. And interestingly, it is not just open to young people. In fact, 45% now of apprentices going on to degree, apprenticeships are actually people over the age of 25. So this is very much something that is ,it has been embedded in our culture and on the way we live and work. But it's actually vital to our ongoing success. And so the more we talk about it, the more we see brilliant programs, you know, Goldman's and Warrick and others linking up because it is about partnerships. It's about enabling people to create a journey and a career in stages. And so to me, it's well done and let's carry on promoting these options.

Matt: Could you just drill down on for our listeners? You mentioned like a level four to seven, what does that actually mean?

Peter: So basically an apprenticeship, as I said, fundamentally, is somebody [00:10:00] fulfilling a job where they, 80% of their time is spent on that. But 20% of the time is spent learning about the job in a richer way. So giving them a pathway to a qualification and simply put, we have level two to level seven level two effectively is a GCSE and level three is an a level. And those largely are being phased out in favor of what's called T levels. Now, so technical qualifications are akin to a GCSE, a level that people could do. As a means of migrating there -it's 80% education. 20% working for levels, four, five, and six and seven levels, four and five are pathways to degree and level six and level seven, move you on to sort of higher levels of degree. So level sevens a month effectively a masters in the sense that we've encouraged people to consider a degree by a university. The advantage here and I think we're all [00:11:00] saying, you know, I was the first to go to university as well, and I wasn't any good at anything else other than math. So I said to somebody, what do I do? And they said, I'll become a cost accountant best to go to university first because that's the pathway into chartered. See, well, it was then, but now it isn't actually, most people prefer people to go and work for a firm of accountants and effectively you do it over a slightly longer period, probably five or six years, but you get the qualification and a degree level as you build through. But you get all that work at the same time and you get paid for it. So basically that's what it is. It's a stepping stone. And clearly, if one does a level four, you might then encourage somebody a few years later to go and do a level six. So it's a stepping stone process. It's not just a one-stop shop. You carry on thinking of apprenticeships as part of a lifelong journey.

Matt: That makes a lot of sense. So Ayaz, as an employer, do you feel that universities are not then providing the right type of learning so that new hires can hit the ground running?

Ayaz: I think it's incredibly challenging for universities to provide the right [00:12:00] type of learning for a specific industry or specific employer, unless you are studying a very niche profession. I think what we find is universities give a fantastic foundation and a lot of that. You know the fundamentals. So if we take computer science or data, they, they really give the students a clear understanding of that, which they can then build on, on the job. And really this is about the best of both. You know, the program we've put together is incredibly exciting. Like I would have loved to go on that program and I'm still attempted to go on it to Peter's earlier point. Maybe I will. Where else can you learn about effectively the bleeding edge of what's going on across engineering and you know, in the industry, but at the same time, hopefully be practicing those skills on the job. Now I'm a firm believer of on the job. Learning is the best way I learn, but different individuals learn in different ways. And I think providing the ability for people to have both really should put them ahead in their [00:13:00] careers. So that's what it's all about. I mean, the other point to mention is computer science data always evolving. It's incredibly difficult, right? For even us as a firm to keep up with what's going on. And Matt, you know, you know, all about web three and what's going on in the metaverse and we haven't even started to scratch the surface of that in terms of this degree. So the pace of innovation is just so great that I think both employers and universities have to evolve how they're teaching. And to me, this is a great kind of stepping stone in that direction as well.

Matt: Stuart, do you want to comment on that as well?

Stuart: I think that's right. I mean, from our point of view, university is about providing choice. There are some students that they know what they want to do with their lives. They don't quite know necessarily how they want to do it, but they know what they want to do with their lives. And for those students, you have a degree. Apprenticeship can be absolutely fantastic. And, but there are others who come to university and they're not really too sure. They want to try lots of things. And university is also a place on a, as it were a traditional standard course. You can try things out. You can develop a portfolio, you can go on various internships and so on and you can work out what you want to [00:14:00] do. And then of course, for some people higher education, isn't the thing for them at all. And we are developing as a country better and better opportunities for students in that space as well. And what may well tie all this together? It's the government's plan on lifelong learning entitlements. And in fact, it's tied together. Well, we will be able to see over time individuals over their lifetimes, taking different routes at different times, probably with different employers through those, those learning journeys. And that's something I think it's really important to support as a university. We are having to learn a lot about this. We've got about 1 in 12 of our undergraduate students currently on a degree apprenticeships where we are working now with more than 70 employers. Students come from a variety of different backgrounds. But some things are common across a number of those programs. A lot of the Peter was great at mathematics and a lot of the students come through degree apprenticeships are very frightened of mathematics. So in terms of developing programs to support students on degree apprenticeships, we've got a maths online bridge program that we've developed, which is available to students coming through, [00:15:00] which just helps polish out those math skills. I've done it myself, but memories back at my level, mathematics really quite, quite strongly. It is a very engaging and non-threatening way. We wouldn't do that normally cause we put people in the classroom, but putting things online in that kind of way, again, enables students to learn at their own pace, enables them to work with each other and them to go back and do things two or three times to the completely confident and developing those sorts of options and skills and pathways is something that is encouraged. I think for us, by working with companies and working with students coming through those degree apprenticeships. 

Matt: Great. Ayaz, let's move over to the kind of social mobility and diversity and inclusion part of this conversation. So Work in FinTech, you know, recently worked with Goldman Sachs running where Goldman helps to run an insight day for 15 year old students, actually from my old school, all of those students were very impressed with the diversity of race and gender at Goldman. So how does Goldman, in order to cultivate this [00:16:00] and does a skills gap or a talent shortage make this challenging?

Ayaz: Yeah. And it's great to hear that feedback. And I actually thought about it. So when I first joined Goldman, I was shocked. By the diversity and it wasn't something I had expected because previously I'd worked at another bank and there was literally zero diversity. And the diversity that was there was not embraced. It was effectively excluded. And so moving to Goldman, I was almost overwhelmed by the amount of diversity that was there. And, you know, over time it's been clear to me as it is clear to the firm that diversity is a commercial advantage for us. You know, we've always been a collaborative organization. You know, people talk about the Goldman Sachs partnership and really we are a collaborative organization. So having more viewpoints and differing viewpoints at the table when we're making decisions is critical to us staying ahead of our peers. And I think it's similar in a diversity [00:17:00] sense in that we've always had to innovate. I talked about the Africa program, you know, we have a lot of internal programs. For our diverse talent, because it's not only about recruiting them, it's about developing them into senior leaders. One of the things I love about this program is that as they're studying the course that we've put together Warrick, they're, you know, they're actually going to be building up skills that even their peers who perhaps had a very privileged education up to that point, they're going to support them. Right, the course we put together is effectively a leadership acceleration course. And so, you know, I'm really excited about this group. Not only succeeding at Goldman, but being future leaders at Goldman as well. And we're always looking at new ways and we're about to actually launch another degree apprenticeship, which is specifically targeted at trading and sales jobs as well. So it's not just engineering. It's across, you know, the various spirits professional kind of parts [00:18:00] we have at the bank. So that's what it's all about innovation. And I guess we've seen that in other companies or, you know, board level as well, where trying to bring on different opinions, points of view and so on which all of this fosters. 

Matt: And I suppose, we do hear a lot about race and gender and sexual orientation, but actually not so much about socioeconomic background and helping people from that kind of setting as well. So like working class people who may be underprivileged often earn less when they're working and they don't reach some of the same levels of seniority that others do. So there's probably a question to all of you, what can academia and the industry do to help combat social and economic mobility problem?

Peter: Well, I don't know whether the Stuart wants to comment from one in the spectrum, but I'm going to pick up on a point that he made that this is all the discussion we're having is in my mind, two parts. I mean, one is how do we create equity of opportunity, which is the point of discussion. But I think the point of discussion is how do you do that across a [00:19:00] spectrum of time? And I take that spectrum of time being our own life journey. And I think that the white paper is a good reference point in the sense that education station is not a single point in time of it. It is something that frankly, with the pace of change that we're seeing, we need to recognize throughout our lives. So to me, the, how we approach it. And I totally agree with what Ayaz was saying that diversity has become a focal point, but ultimately it needs to be truly embedded in our DNA. The inclusivity - how we think respect these sort of soft skills in many ways, but the, the sort of this recognition so that we create equity of opportunity and that equity of opportunity should be that people get a, a common level of primary education or secondary education pathways into the world of work. And let's face it really nearly all of us will end up working in some form. So, whether you go to university as a stepping stone to work, or whether you go directly into an apprenticeship or that you might, I mean, you know, you set up your own [00:20:00] businesses. It's how do you create an equity of opportunity? And I think apprenticeships in many ways are in that context still relatively nascent. We've talked about it over centuries, but realistically we've seen a massive push to, to focus on apprenticeships over the last say, 10 years. And in doing that really to reach into communities that wouldn't have thought about apprenticeships and it's this leveling up agenda. So what I would say is we must de-stigmatize apprenticeships. Apprenticeships are not a second class alternative to university. They are a different pathway as is becoming an entrepreneur, but they're open to everybody and they're open to everybody at the point at which is relevant to them. Stuart said that some people might go to university because then they won't want to do at that stage and it's enriching. I mean, personally, I don't feel I started really developing and the slide was 22- 23. That's at the point at which I thought. You know, I've got to [00:21:00] knuckle down and do a bit of work here to sort of form my career. Yeah. Some people did it at 16. I was, I didn't do very well at GCSE. Didn't do that well at a level, you know, I did get a university, but came away with the two, too. It was only when I actually started thinking I want to be in accounts and I've actually got to get professional qualification and I probably would have been better off going to doing an apprenticeship if they'd existed at the time. But it's giving people choice and I think that's the point of discussion here, Stuart had said that it's creating choice, but it's also creating equity of opportunity so that whether you're sitting in the outer Hebrides, whether you're sitting in London, whether you're old, whether you're young, whether you're black, whether you're white, whether you're male or female, how it is, whether you're human. It's the equity of opportunity of that human being to take a step in their journey.

Stuart: And let me follow on if I may, Matt, because I agree with so much of what we've been saying out. Let's just put your mind, actually, as you were talking to the beach, doing a talk to the city of country Freeman's [00:22:00] Guild about 12 years ago, where everyone was promoting the end of apprenticeships across the piece. Flip it round the other way. Look at the progress we've actually made in developing as it were the brand of apprenticeships at the moment. And around us here, I can tell you independent schools. They promote degree apprenticeships very, very strongly indeed. You know, that that sends that apprenticeships, but something secondary, whatever. I do think we're moving beyond that very, very quickly. If I may, I'm working in a university, I want to the question, the question, because I'm not sure the question that you asked is necessarily quite right. I think we do hear a lot about wanting to working class boys in particular. There's a lot of programs about how to reach into education, cold spots around the country. And apprenticeships are a great tool, of course, for that. And I think the other dimension to this is that a lot of these kinds of identity markers that you were asking about. Alot of them, of course, by definition are shared in one person. There's an intersectionality where people share these sorts of identity markers. And so exactly as Peter says, we've got to reach out in different sorts of ways. And I [00:23:00] think for me, and for us, the biggest part of this is, is reaching back into the schools. Because the way in which somebody, as it were presents themselves to the work market or the education market at age 18, in many cases has been defined at age six, seven, and eight. And so we, we as university, we do that very actively reaching into the school system around the country. But of course, particularly around Midlands and actually quite a lot around London as well in a number of different ways. So for example, we partner with charities like into university who will set up an after-school club and they are the professionals at running an afterschool club, but we can give content, we can give support. Um, we can give advice and we can bring those very young people onto university campuses and just take away that fear. The university is not for me, which is quite a terrible and corrosive thing. We embed some of our staff in schools where kids tend not to go on to university and again, try and work and build that sense that it could be for you. It doesn't have to be, but it could be, if it is [00:24:00] an option, we do a lot of work with teachers and schools. We've got something we call the moral scholars program and that's about working on the advice of teachers with, with particular kids from 14. And helping them with extra studies, the mass program, for example, I was just talking about putting them on a track of support and engagement and learning to the point where if they get into more, it we'll, we'll cut the fee. We'll give them funding. We'll give him support programs and say to those people, right. You're now 100% part of the student community, all the joints fall away. You're now 100% part of that student community. And I think for all of us it's how do you work with schools? How do you work with local communities? How do we reach back down the age? Particularly, I think to primary, primary is critically important that a lot of this is where, as I say, a lot of the kind of expectations are set. A lot of talent is wasted from that point onwards. And, and I think again, government is just saying at the moment that their expectations of what universities should do is increasing in terms of reaching into schools, partnerships personally, I think that's a really, really good thing.

Matt: And that's really wonderful because [00:25:00] one of the reasons that I started Work in FinTech originally. was mentoring projects, helping initially people at my old school. And then we've kind of snowballed into something else where we're doing all the things you've just been talking about. It means a lot to me to hear that someone you know of your stature warrant university is doing that already. So thank you. Ayaz, did you want to add something to that? 

Ayaz: Yeah, definitely. This is the best question so far. I think, you know, I just want to underline some points implicit in what both Peter and Stewart said. One is that this is about partnerships- it's, you know, no organization or field alone can solve this broad issue of society right. And we're super happy to partner with Stuart and Warrick, but also, you know, we started talking to our clients about this apprenticeship and one of our clients has decided to come on board too. So hopefully one of our clients will be also taking six apprentices from the same course at Warrick. And that's something we want to [00:26:00] increase and we want to have like-minded organizations across the city, either partnering with us or setting up similar things. We're also partnering with the community organizations. It's not enough for us to just assume what different groups of underprivileged communities need right. We need to partner with them to really make sure that we're delivering that. You know, there's no point in developing a course if no one is even aware of it or it's not aspirational. Right. So we're working with organizations like UK Black to ensure the course is designed in an accessible way and the students are ready for what that assessment is going to look like and how can they actually, how can they successfully apply to come on the course? So you have to, you know, it's partnerships across the board is super important. The other thing is this is all interrelated. You know, we talk about underprivileged communities. We talk about various identities, but, but it's all related to. [00:27:00] And, um, you know, there's some needs of different communities, which are specific to that community right. You know, the black community has certain needs that wouldn't be relevant to us. Right. Because, you know, we haven't gone through what that community is gone. But there's also certain needs, which aren't specific to that community, you know, the professional development and the ability for them to have this, these equal opportunities may not be specific to that. And that's what we're trying to do with this program is to address. Those broad needs across those underprivileged groups. In my view, we've gone through a few cycles here. We've gone through the first cycle, which was effectively as, as Peter mentioned, it was effectively like open racism and stigma. And look at the beginning of my career, that's where it was you know, I mentioned like the first bank, like work tack was pretty much openly sexist and racist, like, you know, on, [00:28:00] on the floor, as you, as you were work. Yeah, we went from that to really people understanding their conscious bias to understanding subconscious bias. They may have. And now where we're at, I think is what is practical steps? How are we going to fix this? You know, other than educating people about their level of privilege and to their level of bias, what are the practical things we're going to do? And this is what I love about this program is it's practical. It's real and how hopefully it's something that not only we will evolve over time, but something that will inspire other organizations to continue to do the same. 

Matt: Can you share some details about the program itself? We've spoken a lot about it, conceptually, but can you share some details? How can people learn more about it? How can they apply for it? How can other companies get involved? 

Stuart: Can I jump on the first part, Ayaz, then the second part, if I talk a little bit the academic program as it were and then I'll leave you to say something about how to apply and engage what you're going to do with it. So it's a master standard level seven, as we were talking about [00:29:00] earlier program in digital technology solutions. And this is really about developing people's skills and developing their and also developing their behaviors. And that's a really crucial part of this as well. So, students will be taught several multiple modules in cloud computing, for example, uh, data engineering, software development testing, and so on and over a period of couple of years, developing those skills, developing that knowledge, developing how to work together. This has all got to be exactly as Peter was saying exactly his eyes has just said very, very much based on, on the practical and getting things done culminating in the master's dissertation. This is a really important piece, a project it's going to take at least six months of people's time to put together something that is of real use. And it's not just, uh, an academic piece of work. It is something of real use and it culminates in the presentation as well. The student has to settle their idea. It's not just enough for it to be academically clever. That's very important, incidentally. It's not just enough for it to be academic. It's got, have that [00:30:00] practical, real world use for the employer and for the business as a whole. So that's where we are on the academic side. Maybe I ask you to say something about helping to get on to it.

Ayaz: Yes,so you apply to the apprenticeship through the employer. So you would apply through Goldman Sachs. You can go to GS.com and look at our careers website there, and it's pretty easy click on students, and then you should see the program listed. Also, you can like go through what some of our community partners. I mentioned UK black tech earlier. So if you follow UK black tech, you should be able to see the promotion materials. As well, but to add to what Stuart said, you know, this is a great program, right? You know, we're going to have the way we structured it. You will have several weeks on the job and then you'll go off hopefully for a week at Warrick and you'll have a week of concentrated learning there. And that cycle will repeat over the two years. And it's important to mention this is a level of. We're looking at students who've [00:31:00] completed the bachelor's or about to complete a bachelor's degree to apply to this program. And that doesn't mean we don't care about school leavers or people earlier on it's just different programs will target different groups. And I think like, like we've talked to. As a collective, we were all the first in our families to go to university. Different people get to different levels and then are lost right. You know? Yeah. So you can be your first in your family to go to university, but then what's so, so this is really looking at that population. Who have gone to university, they've done the right thing, but then there they're really struggling as to like, what can they do next ,right, to really start their career. And so we're excited about that because I don't think there's many levels, seven programs out there. We know that the talent is there in universities, across the country. So we're quite excited to see whether that matches up in practice as well as in theory.

Peter: So, Ayaz, presumably somebody who's done sort of a [00:32:00] level four or five, six, and looking to progress onwards could consider that as well, because it's sort of, it's the stepping spoon so they may have done earlier.

Ayaz: That's right. Yes. 

Peter: I think your point about, again, I'm jumping in my apologies, but you sort of in one sentence, the sort of one way of connecting and again, I'm making a pitch probably, but for the association of apprentices is to give apprentices, collectively and identity and to sort of mentor each other and support because in practice, whilst you have tremendous strength through the employer and obviously you've got the connection to whoever's working with you on the training, whether it's a university or a training provider, it's also great to create that community around you through apprentices. And I think universities have done a fantastic job of that over the last several decades. I think if we can create that level playing field through things like the association of apprentices to create some of the, sort of the softer connectivity. It actually enriches the whole ecosystem and enriches the individual. It [00:33:00] enriches the businesses and it encourages people to say, well, actually, let's do another stepping stone that let's go on and do something else. It's not a one-stop shop as it was.

Ayaz: It gives them role models as well. And as these programs develop and mature having role models, who've been through similar experiences is going to be critical, really, should talk more about how, how do we align ourselves and create that community. I think that's really important.

Matt: I guess the question personally for you then who, what, what were your role models? Well, yeah, none of us went to university, you know, Stuart, was it, was it your grandfather at the sounds of it?

Stuart: Yeah. Yeah. She inspired me to do this. I mean, it's a very simple reason. How did she know that this was the way forward? Because most of her life, she was a servant for the governor in the big house. And the governor was the chair of the county education committee. And all these people would come round to have meetings in the big house and she would hear it and she would hear how people got on in life because they got an education. So, you know, as I saw every, every Saturday morning, that was something that I heard get an education [00:34:00] get on. And I think for, for, for all of us, one of the big risks here is, is again, that we try to, we get forced into kind of segmenting different things. And we say, this is different to that. I mean, for me, and I think for us a degree apprenticeship-- that is university level education. You are getting a university level education. You're getting through different routes, but you're getting university level education. It's not, you're not getting university level education. You aren't getting a degree. And that's a really important part of it as well. We've built a specific building for the degree apprenticeships. So when the degree apprentices come in and they got, they're very focused and concentrated time, that's their space. That's their home, that's their base. And then from there, we encourage them to do. Go to the sports center, go to the art center, meet other people, reach out, even go to the student union and say some of the things that are going on there build your networks. But, from a strong base, because you are a part of the university, you are getting a university experience as well as the university education. 

Matt: So we've got a few minutes before we kind of finish off. So we've been [00:35:00] talking a lot about the importance of combining work and learning together. And it seems like degree apprenticeships is a bit of a no-brainer right. When we went back, probably when I went to university, you know, Tony Blair wanted everyone to go to university and Stuart, I'm sure you probably know the exact numbers, but over like 50% of young people are going to university now, aren't they? Whereas his son, you and Blair, is now started the largest ed tech in this country, you know, nearly valued a billion dollars and that kind of backtracks on his father's legacy. So what's the future for apprenticeships and what's the future for degrees. Do you think a hybrid model is going to prevail in the years going forward?

Peter: Well, as I jokingly said to, in fact, at the time it was a city calm and we were both meeting a very eminent business person from abroad. And Sadik just said, the Lord Mayor does all the entertaining. I do all the work you see. And I said, well, that's one way of looking at it Sadik,but I'm the 691st Lord Mayor of the city of London. And you're the third mayor of London as a whole. And [00:36:00] my reason for saying that is not to play games, but actually if we've had apprenticeships in this country for a lot longer than we've had universities. I'm not deriving what Tony and John Mayor did in promoting the value of university. I think it is it's for the right people. It's brilliant, but it's not the only way for a young person or even for somebody later on in life to progress. And I think what we're talking about here is this. That we need to give better recognition of choice. And I think you, and for all the right reasons, it has recognized that promoting apprenticeships and creating the linkage of those to innovation and the scale of innovation that's taking place in this country. I call it the incubator nation. I mean, we literally through our connectivity with universities and capital and people were incubating hundreds of thousands of businesses last year, 736,000 new businesses. And so he's created a pathway for people of different ages to go into the world of work. So it really is that sense of how do we create a vision [00:37:00] for anybody to be able to say, well, there's an opportunity to go to university to do a degree bachelor's degree or a master's degree or a PhD, or you can go through an apprenticeship route or you can go straight and maybe set up your own business. Or, you know, you go into a straight vocational area like music and sports. So I think it's giving people the choice. And I think that's our responsibility, both as business as educators, a spokespeople, it's very much reaching younger people to start to sow the positive seeds of what the opportunities are, because actually we are conditioned whether we like it or not, we are conditioned by the people around us. And so what the internet and what technology has done has this opened up that connectivity, not just to the physical world, the people we meet, but actually to the information and opportunities that are out there. And so I think even a podcast like this is very valuable in setting the sense of, um, you've got different choices. [00:38:00] It's up to you to make those choices, not to be told by somebody else, actually you should go and do this. What inspires you to want to do something and maybe experiment because experimenting is a way of actually identifying what you enjoy. I, you know, that's where I would open up. So I think humans doing a great job. Um, I think his father did the right thing at the right time. It's creating that visibility to those choices.

Stuart: That I would agree so much with that last point. I think Tony said at the time was our economy needs more educated people. The route is 50% through higher education spot on at the time now. Now there are multiple routes and that's what you and his of showing and the data others. And it's now about what is the best way to create that incubator nation. What is that great way now to make our economy really grow and develop and be inclusive in the next decade forward? And that's, I think the kind of fundamental philosophy that we've all been talking about.

Matt: Fantastic. So it's been great [00:39:00] talking to you all, and I guess we can all team up on this challenge. We have ahead of us of trying to level the playing field. So this has been a work in FinTech podcast with Stuart Croft from the University of Warrick, Ayaz Haji from Goldman Sachs and Peter Estlin, who is chair of the Association of Apprentices. Thank you very much.[00:40:00]