How Apprenticeship Quality Is Framed on Social Media: Insights from Degree and Non‑Degree Programmes

This paper investigates how social media platforms construct, communicate, and contest notions of "quality" in English apprenticeship programmes, with a comparative focus on degree apprenticeships and non-degree apprenticeships. Drawing on Harvey and Green's (1993) multi-dimensional framework of quality and Bourdieu's concepts of field, capital, and habitus, the study theorises social media as a digital field within which competing stakeholders accumulate and deploy symbolic capital to shape reputational hierarchies within the English apprenticeship system. A qualitative, desk-based thematic discourse analysis was conducted across six platforms: LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and Reddit, examining 420 publicly available posts sampled over a six-month period using drawing on a strategy of keyword analysis to derive trends and outcomes. Five thematic findings emerged from the analysis: the centrality of employer reputation and prestige as a proxy for quality; the significance and influence pedagogic experience has in shaping apprentice discourse; the role of authentic lived experience in constructing counter-narratives to official quality frameworks; the systemic critique of apprenticeship policy on publicly (often politically) engaged platforms; and the framing of value for money as a primary dominant in the determinism of quality. Comparatively, degree apprenticeships attract more coherent, institutionally produced narratives of quality aligned with professional and academic status, whilst non-degree apprenticeships generate more fragmented and contested representations that often reflect apparent inconsistencies in provision and employer engagement. This paper contributes to emerging scholarship at the intersection of vocational education and studies in digital, and social media, demonstrating that socially mediated representations of quality both reinforce and challenge formal regulatory frameworks and that inequalities in digital visibility serve to reproduce, and reinforce existing hierarchies within the apprenticeship system. Recommendations are offered for policymakers, training providers, and employers seeking to engage more effectively with social media discourse to improve understanding of apprenticeship quality.