Next door to where football stars at Manchester United have made history at Old Trafford Stadium sits University Academy 92 (UA92), a fast-growing higher education provider with a ‘game-changing’ approach.
In 2019, five Manchester United legends including Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Phil Neville, and Nicky Butt, turned their focus from football to the future, launching University Academy 92 (UA92) in partnership with Lancaster University.
“They bring a real sense of elite sporting ethos to the table,” Sara Prowse, CEO of UA92, tells Prolific North. “And Lancaster brings the academic rigor. It’s a really unusual, unique partnership.”
From TalkTalk to McCann and KPMG, the university has forged relationships with dozens of industry partners to support its students with hands-on experience. “We’re making sure the curriculum is authentic,” Prowse adds. “It’s very unusual for a higher education provider!”
And where else would you find a former footballer turned broadcaster and businessman like Neville, not only sitting on the board but actively engaging with students?
“From working with us through an application process to trying to help get students to join us, he does welcome speeches when students join and is active across a number of different courses.”
To celebrate National Apprenticeship Week, we went behind the scenes at UA92 to discover why it’s so committed to shaping the future of Northern talent and more on that ‘disruptive’ approach to apprenticeships.
“We’re changing the future of higher education”
After a 30-year career in consumer retail with brands like Hotter Shoes, Lands’ End, and The Very Group, Sara Prowse took the helm as UA92’s CEO in 2021. Initially, she hadn’t considered higher education as a career pathway, but a headhunter’s call changed everything.
“The more I looked into it, the more I became intrigued and really inspired by UA92’s mission to change lives, particularly for young people,” she explains. “As a challenger brand in higher education, I knew there was something to create here.”
UA92 isn’t just another university – it’s deliberately “disruptive”. She says: “It’s not just a degree or apprenticeship at UA92, we’re very different in the different pathways we offer.”
From two and three-year degrees in digital marketing and business management to 12- to 18-month apprenticeships in tech and marketing, the university offers an alternative to the traditional academic pathways. But what sets UA92 apart? Its rejection of outdated academic models filled with pesky exams.
“We believe, passionately, that it’s not just about the subject, it’s about life skills and really preparing young people for the world of work, but also for whatever their journey might be when they leave us.”
From supporting students with character and personal development skills, such as critical thinking or team work, UA92 supports students with “all of the attributes employers are looking for” and embeds this across its undergraduate, apprenticeship, and bootcamp curriculums.
“We’re changing the future of higher education for the modern learner, recognising that today’s learners have changed their needs, wants, how they want to learn, but also what they need to be equipped for the future world. We like to think today’s learners are tomorrow’s leaders.”
“Gary Neville has always been incredibly passionate about education”
Aaron Saxton, director of disruptive Learning at UA92, has played a pivotal role in the university’s efforts to inspire and empower students from all backgrounds.
Growing up in a single-parent family living in Moss Side back in the 80’s, ‘Sax’ is all too familiar with the negative preconceptions those growing up in social economic deprivation face.
Aaron Saxton
“I’m incredibly proud about my heritage and where I’m from in Manchester,” he explains. “I was the first person in my family to go to university and I’ve always been incredibly passionate about innovation, technology, fighting against the status quo and that preconceived idea of what people should and shouldn’t do in society.”
With over a decade of experience as a teacher and his work at tech firm UKFast (now known as ANS), Saxton has driven the development of UA92’s digital programmes. But he only landed the role at UKFast following a conversation with his friend, Neil Lathwood, former CTO of UKFast, who was frustrated by the quality of university graduates.
“He used to say: ‘It’s cr*p, right?’ You can’t get network engineers and what’s coming out of university is rubbish. I told him to put his money where his mouth is and help develop the future. Ten years down the line, we worked on developing one of the top programmes in the country to nurture talent.”
It was at UKFast where he bumped into Gary Neville, who saw the work he was doing with the next generation and wanted to “adopt” and bring that into UA92.
“The rest is history!” he says. “It was a no-brainer to bring all of that innovation and disruptive energy into UA92, which already had a disruptive vision and mission.”
Now at UA92, Saxton brings that same drive for innovation and disruptive thinking to the university, which has long been committed to reshaping higher education.
“The traditional form of education is not fit for purpose as we evolve into this new digital age. The idea of this essay-based, passive form of education, we’re never going to inspire in Manchester – the fastest-growing city in Europe – to connect our young people to business.”
Through UA92’s new Digital Academy, which boasts a robotics lab and an immersive 360-degree Igloo learning space, Saxton and his team are trying to breaking down those traditional barriers to education.
“Gary Neville has always been incredibly passionate about education,” he explains. “I led the bid and construction of the Digital Academy, apprenticeship models, the programme for partners, to help bring it to life.”
But Saxton’s most impactful work is in creating opportunities for those from disadvantaged backgrounds by building relationships with regional industry partners. “Our first ever boot camp student officially graduated recently after two and a half years,” he proudly explains. “They lived below the poverty line, working nights at hotels and Tesco, yet just graduated as a level four DevOps engineer at The Hut Group.”
But don’t get Sax started on the continuous debate about the lack of digital and tech talent: “A lot of businesses just keep firing in senior talent and experience. You are compounding the issue because we need everybody to recognise that everybody has some form of talent or superpower within them.
“It’s our role to help young people to grow, become successful and unlock that talent. But it’s a journey, it takes time and businesses need to work with more partners like UA92 to collaborate, rather than complain about it!”
Breaking down digital barriers – and the future
To engage with Manchester’s next wave of digital and tech talent, UA92 goes beyond traditional recruitment methods. Its community engagement team works directly with youth clubs, sports centers, schools, and colleges, “breaking down barriers” to higher education.
On the last Thursday of each month, UA92 also hosts ‘Youth 92,’ an initiative inviting young people onto campus to experience university life firsthand.
“We don’t do that as a recruitment process – it’s about building confidence – but we are starting to see success with those young people wanting to come to the university,” explains Prowse.
UA92 also offers initiatives like Fast Forward, which provides students of all ages and backgrounds – particularly those without traditional qualifications – a pathway into higher education. While the programme focuses on degree courses, UA92 is “flexible”, allowing students to pivot into bootcamps or apprenticeships if that suits them better.
“Some people have joined us thinking that a bootcamp is for them, but actually they’re moved into the apprenticeship programme, so we’ve got that flexibility across the different pathways.”
Looking to the future, Prowse highlights the significant growth the university has experienced since her arrival four years ago: “We had 169 students four years ago, now we’re close to 1,300 so we’re growing rapidly this year. We are 40% up on last year as we start to take applications for the next academic cycle in September.”
With two campuses, including the Business School in Spinningfields, UA92 plans to expand its facilities to “accelerate and grow”.
“Currently, we have capacity across those two campuses for 2,000 learners on campus. One of the beauties of the apprenticeship program is those students are with us on a Wednesday while our undergrad students are here on a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.”
She adds: “How do we really provide an infrastructure to satisfy the demand that we think we can achieve? Our focus is on making sure the local community is really providing that demand for a place everyone wants to go. We really do have quite ambitious growth plans!”
The focus for the future remains on growing student numbers, particularly in undergraduate and apprenticeship programmes.
“We have around 50 apprenticeship students today and the ambition is to grow that to 1,000. To achieve that, it’s about expanding our course portfolio, working with industry partners into our community, and bringing that to life for our students.”
Find out more about UA92 here: https://ua92.ac.uk/about-ua92/our-founders/our-partners/