Degree Apprenticeships: Explained
Leave school, go to uni, graduate with a pointless degree, get a job, spend the rest of your life paying back student loans…
Would you really advise someone else to take the conventional path after sixth form or college, knowing that the odds are stacked against them?
“But it will all be worth it in the long run - graduates earn £10,000 more per year than people who don’t go to uni!” Someone tell this guy that his economics degree would have been more useful if he understood the concept of supply and demand in the higher education market.
In this article, I will challenge your perspective on going to university and introduce you to the best career path available to young people leaving sixth form college.
First - let’s make one thing clear. The more people that go to uni = the more degrees in circulation. This means they are becoming less scarce and employers will look to other factors in order to distinguish between average Joe and the top dog.
The most valuable thing you can bring to the table as a young person is experience in the industry.
But how do you get experience without a degree in the first place?
It’s almost become taboo to just get an entry level job straight from KS4 or KS5 education.
While you were at uni drinking yourself to oblivion on student night, the guy who went straight into work has been building his professional network, enhancing his skillset and gaining real world experience at the same time.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand the ‘need’ to achieve higher education, especially if you have older siblings that set the bar high, and may feel that you need to please your parents with a default qualification.
And I completely understand if you need higher education to reach your chosen career path (e.g. doctor, lawyer, engineer etc). This isn’t aimed at you.
It’s the people reading this that think wasting 3 years of their life on a degree they’re never going to use is a good idea that I’m talking to. You know who you are…
I’m here to tell you that there is a path that combines working in the real world and gaining industry experience, with the cherry-on-top being the degree itself.
By the way - did I mention you won’t have to pay a single thing for this route of higher education?
But I can one-up that even more. Not only are you not paying for your tuition fees, you’re quite literally being paid to do it.
My aim to advise students considering higher eduction and question their decision making, to prevent them falling into the trap that has been laid out for them from the very beginning…
OK, I’m interested - how exactly do they work?
In 2020 I started a degree apprentice scheme in IT. During during the four year scheme you’re supposed to spend 2 years in a technical role learning how to code (I rotated after 18 months), and the other 2 years in a non-technical role working in the business.
By the way - did I mention I had absolutely ZERO coding experience going into this course. No computer science GCSE, and not a single clue what a ‘Java’ was.
The working week is structured as 4 days per week on-the-job and the other day is spent on day release to university.
The name of the degree that complemented my scheme is ‘Digital and Technology Solutions’, which involves a variety of programming skills but also non-technical competencies such as project management and leadership.
The best part of being an apprentice is being able to be wrong. No one expects you to get it right every time - after all, you’re ‘just an apprentice’. Use this opportunity to ask as many questions as you need. No one will think you’re stupid even if you think the question is.
There are definitely challenges to being an apprentice too. It has been pretty full on working full time for the best part of three years… on top of doing a degree. But the workload was very manageable through the first 2 years and I only really got tight on deadlines in the 3rd year. 4th year has been much less intense… I even found myself time to start this website to share my experience.
If you can’t tell by now, I care a lot about exposing the great opportunity that degree apprenticeships are. I hope you found this article useful.
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