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STEVE CHIOTAKIS: McDonald’s has been trying to do more than employ workers. It wants to educate those workers as well.

For a couple of years now, Mickey Dee’s employees here in the United States have been able to earn college credit though in-house training programs. Well, now McDonald’s workers in Britain will be able to get a full-blown degrees while working at the fast food chain.

From London, the BBC’s Rebecca Singer has more.

Rebecca Singer: McDonald’s is working hard to prove a McJob is something to be proud of. Its new two-year foundation degree is called Managing Business Operations, and it’s being developed along with Manchester Metropolitan University.

It will be taught by a combination of classroom study, e-learning, and workplace training.

Dr. Sue Shaw is from Manchester Met Business School, which will also accredit the degree. She says the course syllabus isn’t just about working in a McDonald’s restaurant.

Shaw: People management, operations management, managing a restaurant, central finance, marketing, all the things that you’d expect to need to know about if you’re going to manage a restaurant and indeed run a business.

Shaw has worked with several big business like Bank of New York Mellon and McCan Erikson to develop in-house education programs. She says it helps recruit, retrain, and motivate staff, many of who left school with no formal qualifications.

Learning on the job also means that staff don’t have to take time off to get a degree.

In London, I’m the BBC’s Rebecca Singer from Marketplace.