To ask what you really think of apprenticeship s

[Soannoyingititchessobad]

My year 13 DS is looking at apprenticeships for his next step. We’ve seen some great ones and this route seems ideal for him. His girlfriend has already secured a great degree apprenticeship with an international company and will earn a good salary whilst getting this degree and experience.

DS’s girlfriend is very bright and is doing very academic A levels and is likely to do very well in them. She is really happy with the apprenticeship route and we are so proud of her.

This is my AIBU. Lots of my friends have said ‘I can’t believe she’s doing an apprenticeship. What a waste. She should be going to Uni because she’s so bright’. I’m really shocked. My family (siblings, husband, his family) have all been to Uni but see apprenticeships as an equally great career path. I just wanted to know what others think - is the general feeling really that apprenticeships are inferior to a degree and only for people who aren’t really academic?

I know people will say ‘do what’s right for your kid and ignore others’ thoughts’ but it just sparked an interest in me and wanted to understand what others think

For me, the maths isn’t mathing for degree apprenticeships.
some seem to be 4 days working with them, with 1 day release to go to uni.
how can they possibly keep up with someone doing the same degree and just that?
unless that degree isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

I know but they used to do retail apprenticeships that were to become a shelf stacker with god knows what classroom input. I think it was a way to get cheap labour.

Dd is doing an apprenticeship. She started at 16 on £5.25 an hour. Went up to £6 something in her second year. Last week it went up to £10 an hour as she turned 19.
She travels 6 times a year to college two and a half hours away for a week at a time. ( terrified me when she was 16)
She will be fully qualified come September and her place of employment have offered her a full time job- starting salary £35,000.
She'll have a necessary trade and absolutely no debt.
Win win.

Many years ago there were various routes into the professions. In some of them like librarianship, accountancy and nursing you "learned on the job". That is, you took your professional exams alongside working and did most of the studying in your spare time. It was not then called an "apprenticeship" but worked in a similar way. You earned a salary, worked and took exams internatl to the profession.

In some of these (such as librarianship) all that was wiped out in the late 1970s when the new universities began to offer desgrees in library and information science. A tranche of young people emerged clutching a bit of paper we did not have. They had no experience of how to run a library and many were quickly promoted beyond the level of their experience and abilities. Those of us who had qualified by the older route and knew the job thoroughly were actually considered less well qualified.

Personally I feel that learning on the job and qualifying as you progress is a far surer route into a trade or profession than going to uni. You gain knowledge of the trade and also learn the discipline and resillience of self directed study. This is the huge advantage that an apprenciceship gives over a degree, It is a pity that more employers cannot afford to invest in young people by offering them.

Speaking as someone who were to uni inlater life to improve my qualifications and ended up doing a doctorate. I never went back to librarianship. The skills I learned as a librarian gave me a huge advantage over other undergraduates. I did not need to learn basic academic skills lsuch as how the books were arranged in the library, referencing or how to compile a bibliography.

Yes they were useless, and part of the reason so many complicated and onerous requirements were put into the apprenticeship programme was because so many employers took the piss. Some still do. I don't know what the answer is. Employers are treated like Gods, when they complain about young people having no skills but some ( not all by a long shot) are not prepared to put aside any time at all to train apprentices. Shelf stacking will not meet the requirements for, for example the L2 Customer Services apprenticeship. I was an apprenticeship training provider for this, amongst others and have had to sanction employers for this crap because they are wasting students time, paying them below minimum wage but not giving them time or opportunities they have to in order for them to pass the course. . I'm not sure what happened to them, they probably did the same again with another provider. There were many who got them to do work shadowing in different departments, put them through training courses, allowed them to attend workshops, gave them an afternoon off to do assignments etc and moved them onto higher levels apprenticeships. But all of that takes time. In my experience the most successful ones are where the students have to go to college to get a qualification, like the AAT. But again, that needs teachers in FE to be paid properly to want to do it. For example, for trade apprenticeships, a day at college learning how to do the job is by far the most efficient way to do it, but courses are closing due to lack of staff. I don't know what can be done about employers who take on apprentices then take the piss, because any regulations designed to stop this also affects good apprenticeship employers possibly making them too onerous to take on. Sadly I think at the end of the day we are just not a country for young people. We don't care enough about them, preferring to slag them off while shafting them at every opportunity. I'm not sure Germany for example has the same attitude to apprentices. It's a problem we've had for decades.

There is actually a Librarian apprenticeship now, and hardly any librarianship degrees so it's gone full circle! The Aberystwyth Librarianship degree ( which I think is still the leading degree) is part time distance learning, so it's gone full circle.

I think people assume they’re for people who can’t get into uni but they’re the way forward, in the future a lot of uni graduates are going to find it difficult after they graduate

Lots of graduates are unable to find work.

My 16 year old son (out of three thousand applicants) was one of 18 to successfully start an apprenticeship for a global company and had to move 200 miles away. Imagine how I felt!

With a degree apprenticeship, you are going to uni. Sometimes a very good one. Plus, you are getting relevant work experience and a salary at the same time.

I think apprenticeships are brilliant.

Different careers suit different ways of learning and routes in and I really hope that the education landscape continues to change and reflect this.

History, languages, anything culture driven, linguistics, essentially most of the arts subjects are likely best suited to university.

STEM on the other hand is very well suited to apprentices. Especially if they know what they want to do. I think if young people are not sure then a degree can keep things open and provide routes to explore but if they know what avenue they want to pursue then an apprenticeship can support that, give them a qualification and pay them. What's not to love?

One of my DC is on an apprenticeship (non degree but does have a qualification at the end), one is doing the rounds of uni open days and will go to uni, the third is a way off that yet but is possibly heading in an engineering direction so we will be encouraging them to explore apprenticeships as an alternative because the debt that uni brings now is just huge.

Theres a big shift away from academic qualifications and into skills based certification, employers want to know that the person they are hiring is capable of actually doing the job not just has the theoretical knowledge of what the subject area involves.

Apprenticeships are a very good way of developing the theory and putting it to practice at the same time, proving competency and building experience simultanueously.

ive seen some brilliant Cybersecurity apprenticeships with starting salaries of £28k which is a really good salary for an 18 year old who is also getting a course and time to study.

a degree apprenticeship is the bees knees - you got a job and get a degree , although incredibly hard work - harder than a simple degree

unless you need a specific course for your preferred future like being a vet, or you want to work in academic research , or you have a deep fascination with a particular topic , university isn’t everything by any means

If your DS can get an apprenticeship then that’s great. Well done his gf for getting a degree apprenticeship. That’s amazing - academic and work experience combined is perfect.

My niece did a L4 apprenticeship straight after her A levels. 4 years on, she doing so well. She’s been promoted and has a fantastic career in the civil service. Her friends who went to uni have really struggled to get jobs in their chosen field. I think actual work experience is valued highly by employers these days.

40 yrs of incoming uni debt. Apprenticeship sounds very attractive

Your friends clearly don't understand the difference between a degree apprenticeship and, for example, a level 2 one.

I think they are all pretty much great for the right person.

My ds has 5 university offers and has applied for four graduate apprenticeships. One of the apprenticeships places him on one of the degree courses he has applied for. The others are same subject, different universities. The only difference is the degree apprenticeship takes 5 years instead of three and he works over the Easter & Summer holidays. They do the same work in the same labs.

And obviously, it will cost him £60,000 less.

I don't mind which he chooses. We'll take the best offer on results day.

They’re great in my opinion.
My work offers apprenticeships in electrical engineering which a colleague joined a few years ago, it’s 4 days on the job, 1 day in a college style environment but all done on site. He’s already earning triple what I am and has skills that he can transfer literally anywhere. If I wasn’t dyslexic and a bit thick I would have considered it for myself.

University is a lost cause these days unless you want to go into a field where you need a degree such as medicine or law.

More young people are starting to realise it’s a waste of time and all you achieve is a load of debt, setting your career progression back 3/4 years and at the end of it you’ve got 400 people with the same qualification trying to find the same job and they all end up in a role that has nothing to do with their degree.

I've worked in the apprenticeships sector and a good, technical, structured, training apprenticeship, at level 3 and beyond are definitely worth it. A friend's son did his A levels, got a apprenticeship with a tech company, is not yet 30 and earns £200k a year, no debt! Others I placed are now management, one a director. Do your research, they are not easy to get as competition is now fierce and applications for September and beyond start, for this year, should already be in. DH had a good mechanical engineering apprenticeship, late 70s / 80s and ended up with an excellent, constantly employed, employment path. Degrees work in some sectors, not all, an example is a friend's daughter having been turned down for a retail training place, as her 1:1 in Media Production was not seen as being relevant, is now in a minimum wage admin role. Good degree level apprenticeships should not / never be confused with tick box ones run for staff already doing a role, usually at L2, they are very different, rather like degrees in some subjects are not worth it, regardless of how sold by a university.

The whole idea of going to uni as the only option is so outdated!
I work with people up to their eyeballs in debt but now in jobs that aren’t relevant to their degrees.

My DD (20) did an apprenticeship and was offered a F/T job there whilst still doing it.

And at the end of the apprenticeship he’ll be able to apply for senior positions that require 5+ years experience so he’ll be able to go into mid to upper tier salary bands for the roles. My role for example is benchmarked at £95k-£130k dependent on experience, less than 2 years would be at the lowest end of that, straight out of an apprenticeship could be mid range on approx £110k.

I think they're great. If I had a child I think I'd encourage them to go down that route.

Your friends are shallow snobs, OP.

I write that as Russell Group academic from a university that gets a lot of students rejected by Oxbridge.

I do think PP questioning the study allocation has an implicit point. If you have only a small proportion of time for study you must use it efficiently. You don’t have time for the wide ranging intellectual convos and ‘what if’ explorations that can be fantastic sources if growth, and even life changing. The truth is, however, that few students (at least in my field) seem to be interested in these conversations anyway. Realistically, you probably aren’t missing that much.

I am very interested in @Twitinthewindow ’s comment that apprentice engineers seem better qualified than those from a strictly academic background. If you have anything to add to that, TIA.

I think they’re a great way to start a career. And perfect for some. But I for one was not ready to start a career at 18. I did a STEM degree then a vocational (STEM adjacent) masters. I’d have hated a career in physics which I thought I liked best at 18. I also benefited ENORMOUSLY from my university experience in broadening my mind, learning about the world and doing various summer jobs and travelling.
I guess I didn’t do enough as a teen but I grew up in a very working class area that was quite inward looking so didn’t really have the opportunities. I honestly got so much more than a degree from my university experiences.

My son is doing an apprenticeship & it was hard to get, he applied for around 25 apprenticeships. He feels very fortunate as he is learning so much & earning money, paying rent, running a car & going off in holiday with his friend next month. He'll hopefully come out of this with a lot of hands on experience (engineering), a qualification & no debt. According to h8m the only downside is that he doesn't get long school holidays off like his university friends.