While most of her friends are struggling under a growing mountain of student debt, 25-year-old Emma Nolan is browsing the property market and planning to buy a house.
Emma began a degree apprenticeship at defence and space manufacturing company Thales in 2018.
For Emma, the apprenticeship was a “win-win. You get work experience and you get a degree” without doing a full time course and being laden with the debt.
Her apprenticeship in software engineering enabled her to spend four days a week working while studying for a degree in digital and technology solutions at Manchester Metropolitan University.
She graduated in 2022 and now works as a software engineering manager at Thales. Compared with most of her friends that chose to go to university, Emma said: “I know that I earn a higher wage than them.”
‘What even is student debt?’
“I haven’t bought a house but I very much could have done it. I’m looking to do that this year. Most friends haven’t managed to do that with their degree,” she told The i Paper.
Emma said her decision to apply for an apprenticeship was because “I wanted to earn money. I knew at the time that going to university meant getting into debt”.
The average age for first time buyers in the UK is 34, and in London, 35.
While many of her friends face high student debt Emma Nolan is planning to buy a house this yearIn England, graduates that began to repay their loans in April 2025 faced an average of £53,000 of student debt, figures from the Student Loans Company (SLC) showed. This was a 10 per cent increase on the figure for the previous year.
Last November, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a three-year freeze on the salary at which graduates begin student loan repayments at £29,385, starting from April 2027.
Emma said: “Every time it comes up, me and my friends who have done apprenticeships will laugh and say ‘what is student debt? what is that?'”
“I went into the apprenticeship very shy, but now people describe me as quite confident,” she added.
Participation in apprenticeships in England increased by 3.4 per cent to 761,840 people in 2024/25, government figures show.
Numbers of those beginning apprenticeships also increased by 4.1 per cent to 353,500.
‘I wasn’t prepared for the real world’
James Wiley, 44, went to Southampton Solent University (2000-2004) but found that “it didn’t prepare me for what the real world, the job world, is like”.
“It gave me lots of theory but didn’t translate that into a career afterwards,” he said.
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He has since completed two apprenticeships with Royal Mail, one in leadership and management in 2009, and the other in project management in 2019. He now works as a product design manager.
“That mixture of work and study allows you to get to a point where you’re not building up debts and you’re able to practice what you’re learning,” he said.
“I wish I had that at university,” he added. “It’s an amazing experience. I used the work elements to test and validate what I was learning.”
James said that each of his apprenticeships directly translated into promotions at Royal Mail as they “really honed certain key skills”.
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Both Emma and James now sit on the council of the Association of Apprentices, an organisation that works to connect and empower apprentices in the UK.
James said this role has given him the chance to “see how valuable it is to have apprentices across all kinds of industries, and how the fresh thinking of bringing in apprentices is actually driving businesses forward”.
“The ability to document that evidence on your CV gives you that edge that you would not have at university,” he added. “The success stories are absolutely brilliant.”
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