Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Entry to the professions in the UK is increasingly the preserve of (BA) degree-level graduates. While there has been a substantial increase in the numbers of under 30-year-olds participating in British higher education over the past 25 years, longitudinal and family income data suggests social mobility is stalling. Research commissioned for the UK government’s panel on “Fair access to the professions” found that children from higher social gradients (at birth) and undergraduates attending elite universities were disproportionately represented in the top professions, including the media and creative industries. Cohort data from the National Child Development Survey (NCDS) born in 1958, and the British Cohort Study (BCS) born in 1970, suggests that ‘there appears to be a widening social gap in entry to the top professions regardless of the ability of the individual’ (Macmillan, 2012). 

The creative industries in Britain represent well over 10 per cent of annual economic output, higher than manufacturing. In recent years, jobs growth in these industries has outstripped the growth of other jobs by nearly four-to-one. In order to benefit from growth people from a variety of social backgrounds need to get a fair chance of accessing these jobs. Not all jobs in the creative arts sector are well paid, but it is clear that they offer people a range of flexibilities including the ability to start and grow a business. However, research commissioned by the creative and cultural industries skills council in the 2000s found a consistent pattern of unequal access to these occupations by people from lower-income and ethnic minority backgrounds. One reason employers said they preferred recent graduates was because degrees offered an easy sifting mechanism during the application process. Other employers offered unpaid internships, which favored people from richer backgrounds or families with the right connections. In 2004, the skills council decided to address these structural inequalities by instituting a scheme of the first creative apprenticeships, initially in the country's theatres and museums. Today, there are in excess of 4,000 creative apprentices on program each year. These apprenticeships explicitly promote non-graduate entry level routes to a range of sought after occupational roles, helping to diversify the workforce.

Hiring only graduates widens earnings inequality by increasing demand for those already at the highest wage levels. Alternatively, shifting employer demands toward non-graduates can lower earnings inequality and potentially increase economic mobility. The paper looks at one initiative that successfully altered employer hiring and training behavior, to the benefit of non-graduates. It provides employer case studies in Britain’s creative sector that demonstrate the feasibility of creating career pathways and improved earnings opportunities for non-graduates in fields that formerly required a BA degree. The paper concludes by looking at future options for using apprenticeships and other mechanisms to reduce inequality by promoting wider access to these important twenty-first century professions.