Elite gossip

Harrods degree’s

Learn while you earn!! How do you fancy a free degree, no tuition fees, no text book fees and get paid to do your job at the same time? So we have your attention now right? Britain’s luxury retailer; Harrods will be the first to offer an Honours degree in sales this summer. The first 10 lucky students will go through a syllabus of shopping psychology, product knowledge, economics and human behaviour in return for working throughout their degree and six months after.

Universities are getting less and less support, therefore retailers are becoming increasingly aware of other ways to support their staff practically. Recently a sum of £60m was invested to universities to work on projects alongside the work-place by the Higher Education Funding Council for England in order to help bring them out of recession. Boots, Specsavers and Barclays Bank have also undergone similar initiatives for their staff.

Harrods Learning and Development Manager, Arkin Salih says “the fact that this scheme is accredited gives the training legitimacy. It will hugely boost staff development, and bolsters the reputation of sales as a career. We have staff with spectacular people skills who are master craftsmen at making a sale – we want this degree to nurture that talent, and promote it in other staff, too."

With tuition fees on the up and government funding decreasing, this is a great step in the right direction for the UK’s luxury retail industry; maybe others will now follow in Harrods footsteps?

Photograph: James McCauley