You can get a degree (even a masters), and get paid to do it, it makes sense.
I’d say yes they are if you can get one. I know many people who didn’t go the Uni, started on the bottom rung but climb up as their experience grew. I have even seen a uni grad come in to work and they were offended that a school friend they knew who didn’t go to Uni was earning more than them and were higher up the ladder than them
I think some of this depends on the degree you are taking. Media studies for some I am convinced is just an excuse not to have to get a job for another 3 yrs. I personally know quite a few prison officers who have degrees in social care or human behaviour. So they spent 3yrs studying and running up debt, to now be doing a job paying 25k and no hope of paying off their debt or getting a mortgage because of said debt. Getting a degree is no guarantee of getting a better job depending on what you have studied
I got an apprenticeship when I was 16 at a small plastic injection molders, in accountancy. I’d been there 2 months and their only other account went on maternity leave and they expected me to run the entire business’ accounts after 8 weeks training at the age of 16, on £2.80 an hour at the time.
The concept of an apprenticeship is great, but my experiences of the apprenticeship scheme are not unique. Even Subway were hiring ‘apprentice sandwich makers’ lol. This is capitalism, to companies this is just cheap labor.
Very few said uni degree (less than 5%).
Personally, for money-making potential and income security, I think the right apprenticeship and right degree are equal, the right apprenticeship is better than the wrong degree, the right degree is better than the wrong apprenticeship, the wrong degree is better than nothing, the wrong apprenticeship isn’t worth shit. The wrong degrees being ones that won’t lead into a related job, but at least they give you a degree on your CV to show you’re educated and to get your foot in the door at certain graduate-entry jobs or recruitment schemes. The wrong apprenticeships are those for low-skilled jobs that lead to dead-end careers; where you’ll get an apprentice wage for a year or two, but could have adequately learnt the job in a month and could be the best in the team after three months, if you’re a hard-worker (eg admin assistant, cleaner, fast food chains, retail assistant) – so you should really just be on a normal wage.
Depends. Academic skills are transferable in a lot of jobs, however most degrees aren’t vocational enough. I was lucky enough to do a course where I could do a paid placement for my 3rd year, albeit with an academic write-up at the end
Depends on the degree/apprenticeships really.
Certain many degrees would be significantly better if combined with real world working conditions. However you aren’t going far with an apprenticeship in Starbucks.
I dislike that apprenticeships are seen as lesser choice.
I’ve done both, and both are good.
An apprenticeship gives you practical work experience, and puts you in a very good position to get a normal job by the end of it. You don’t really learn anything though, outside of how to work in that specific company in that specific role.
A degree gives you no work experience, but a ton of knowledge and a great thing to put on your CV at the end of it.
Neither is ‘better’, it just depends on the sector and the individual. In some routes, an apprenticeship is better, in other routes a degree is better.
Depends.
Apprenticeships are far better in the main than these degrees they hand out like soap nowadays.
I’m talking proper apprenticeships for jobs like builders, sparks, grease monkeys, not bloody burger makers at Maccas.
I’ve always said it, school leaving age should be 14 for boys and girls who want to take up a proper trade, get them learning young and when they’re a young man or woman they’ll qualify into a decent well paying job for life.
Caterpillar used to do apprenticeships.
2 weeks doing a level 2 NVQ and the following 9 months working full time on the production line for 9k a year.
Full time staff earning 27k.
This was 5 years ago
If you want to be a welder and earn £300+ a day, Yes apprentices are better than a university degree.
If you to get 20k into debt, be a Barista and earn minimum wage, an arts degree is probably more applicable.
Being serious, this is more about what you want to use your degree / training for in the end. Some jobs require you to have a minimum of degree standard education, others don’t. You can have a well paid / badly paid job with either.
As usual it depends on what industry you are going into.
I know a kid who did an apprenticeship in construction and is now making a solid 30k wage in his first year out.
Working for a well known company is a good bet.
Depends on the company and qualifications you get from said apprenticeship, in my company they come out as a level 5 on 36k a year plus on call payments and overtime (so more like 50k before tax)
But it depends on the company, you need to vet the company properly. Some take the piss others are great and will help you get a degree if you want one
Like others have said, the answer depends completely on what you wish to do as a career.
BUT
Non professional university degrees often dictate where your career ends, rather than where it begins. Many firms have minimum education policies for higher level jobs, middle/upper management, anything strategic or relying on complex regulations etc. It can be quite possible to find entry level jobs in firms that don’t require a degree but a decade later find you have run out of “track”. Of course you can always reskill but studying with a mortgage and kids is very difficult.
Considering where you might like to end up is important IMO.
Absolutely. I’m a civil engineer and wish this was available when I was a nipper. Man I’m old. Is 31 old?
Different streams really. We just have so little formalization of what streams lead to what sort of career or life its hard to say for individual cases.
Apprenticeships are certainly better money now, and the Tories have allowed the University system to go to *complete* shit over the last 10 years so its not a great comparison at the moment.
However it will always need to be said there are many essential careers that *require* a university degree. In this country we have allowed many of those careers to slip to the point where its actually getting *really hard* to make a case that its a good decision for anyone to make to follow these paths. I’m not sure thats really a good direction for our society to be heading to be blunt.
I did an apprenticeship in engineering and it was a good decision for me. I thought about university but I’m just not someone to sit still in lectures and learn in that environment. I prefer a hands on approach.
I’ve worked with engineering graduates with masters degrees and they know a little about a lot of engineering stuff but tend to be quite useless when it comes to in the field work and real world problem solving. They just don’t possess the practical skills needed to get the job done a lot of the time.
That said, I’ve seen university graduates move up the ranks a lot quicker and have more appeal when it comes to working abroad than someone with an apprenticeship. Also, certain engineering fields require degree level education, and won’t entertain someone with a HNC and 5 years time served.
Yes I think so, I have a degree and I have also gone through an academy. I will say that the academy prepared me far better for my job than university did.
Now there are even courses, with paid degrees included. Its a no brainer
Depends on the person and the apprenticeship. Some are great some aren’t. Same as degrees.
The main thing that needs to change is that we need to stop pretending that apprentices aren’t used as value adding labour. Pay them a real wage instead of pretending they’re all living at home and getting a free education off the company. They are there doing a job that otherwise wouldn’t be and getting paid pennies.
20 comments
You can get a degree (even a masters), and get paid to do it, it makes sense.
I’d say yes they are if you can get one. I know many people who didn’t go the Uni, started on the bottom rung but climb up as their experience grew. I have even seen a uni grad come in to work and they were offended that a school friend they knew who didn’t go to Uni was earning more than them and were higher up the ladder than them
I think some of this depends on the degree you are taking. Media studies for some I am convinced is just an excuse not to have to get a job for another 3 yrs. I personally know quite a few prison officers who have degrees in social care or human behaviour. So they spent 3yrs studying and running up debt, to now be doing a job paying 25k and no hope of paying off their debt or getting a mortgage because of said debt. Getting a degree is no guarantee of getting a better job depending on what you have studied
I got an apprenticeship when I was 16 at a small plastic injection molders, in accountancy. I’d been there 2 months and their only other account went on maternity leave and they expected me to run the entire business’ accounts after 8 weeks training at the age of 16, on £2.80 an hour at the time.
The concept of an apprenticeship is great, but my experiences of the apprenticeship scheme are not unique. Even Subway were hiring ‘apprentice sandwich makers’ lol. This is capitalism, to companies this is just cheap labor.
Very few said uni degree (less than 5%).
Personally, for money-making potential and income security, I think the right apprenticeship and right degree are equal, the right apprenticeship is better than the wrong degree, the right degree is better than the wrong apprenticeship, the wrong degree is better than nothing, the wrong apprenticeship isn’t worth shit. The wrong degrees being ones that won’t lead into a related job, but at least they give you a degree on your CV to show you’re educated and to get your foot in the door at certain graduate-entry jobs or recruitment schemes. The wrong apprenticeships are those for low-skilled jobs that lead to dead-end careers; where you’ll get an apprentice wage for a year or two, but could have adequately learnt the job in a month and could be the best in the team after three months, if you’re a hard-worker (eg admin assistant, cleaner, fast food chains, retail assistant) – so you should really just be on a normal wage.
Depends. Academic skills are transferable in a lot of jobs, however most degrees aren’t vocational enough. I was lucky enough to do a course where I could do a paid placement for my 3rd year, albeit with an academic write-up at the end
Depends on the degree/apprenticeships really.
Certain many degrees would be significantly better if combined with real world working conditions. However you aren’t going far with an apprenticeship in Starbucks.
I dislike that apprenticeships are seen as lesser choice.
I’ve done both, and both are good.
An apprenticeship gives you practical work experience, and puts you in a very good position to get a normal job by the end of it. You don’t really learn anything though, outside of how to work in that specific company in that specific role.
A degree gives you no work experience, but a ton of knowledge and a great thing to put on your CV at the end of it.
Neither is ‘better’, it just depends on the sector and the individual. In some routes, an apprenticeship is better, in other routes a degree is better.
Depends.
Apprenticeships are far better in the main than these degrees they hand out like soap nowadays.
I’m talking proper apprenticeships for jobs like builders, sparks, grease monkeys, not bloody burger makers at Maccas.
I’ve always said it, school leaving age should be 14 for boys and girls who want to take up a proper trade, get them learning young and when they’re a young man or woman they’ll qualify into a decent well paying job for life.
Caterpillar used to do apprenticeships.
2 weeks doing a level 2 NVQ and the following 9 months working full time on the production line for 9k a year.
Full time staff earning 27k.
This was 5 years ago
If you want to be a welder and earn £300+ a day, Yes apprentices are better than a university degree.
If you to get 20k into debt, be a Barista and earn minimum wage, an arts degree is probably more applicable.
Being serious, this is more about what you want to use your degree / training for in the end. Some jobs require you to have a minimum of degree standard education, others don’t. You can have a well paid / badly paid job with either.
As usual it depends on what industry you are going into.
I know a kid who did an apprenticeship in construction and is now making a solid 30k wage in his first year out.
Working for a well known company is a good bet.
Depends on the company and qualifications you get from said apprenticeship, in my company they come out as a level 5 on 36k a year plus on call payments and overtime (so more like 50k before tax)
But it depends on the company, you need to vet the company properly. Some take the piss others are great and will help you get a degree if you want one
Like others have said, the answer depends completely on what you wish to do as a career.
BUT
Non professional university degrees often dictate where your career ends, rather than where it begins. Many firms have minimum education policies for higher level jobs, middle/upper management, anything strategic or relying on complex regulations etc. It can be quite possible to find entry level jobs in firms that don’t require a degree but a decade later find you have run out of “track”. Of course you can always reskill but studying with a mortgage and kids is very difficult.
Considering where you might like to end up is important IMO.
Absolutely. I’m a civil engineer and wish this was available when I was a nipper. Man I’m old. Is 31 old?
Different streams really. We just have so little formalization of what streams lead to what sort of career or life its hard to say for individual cases.
Apprenticeships are certainly better money now, and the Tories have allowed the University system to go to *complete* shit over the last 10 years so its not a great comparison at the moment.
However it will always need to be said there are many essential careers that *require* a university degree. In this country we have allowed many of those careers to slip to the point where its actually getting *really hard* to make a case that its a good decision for anyone to make to follow these paths. I’m not sure thats really a good direction for our society to be heading to be blunt.
I did an apprenticeship in engineering and it was a good decision for me. I thought about university but I’m just not someone to sit still in lectures and learn in that environment. I prefer a hands on approach.
I’ve worked with engineering graduates with masters degrees and they know a little about a lot of engineering stuff but tend to be quite useless when it comes to in the field work and real world problem solving. They just don’t possess the practical skills needed to get the job done a lot of the time.
That said, I’ve seen university graduates move up the ranks a lot quicker and have more appeal when it comes to working abroad than someone with an apprenticeship. Also, certain engineering fields require degree level education, and won’t entertain someone with a HNC and 5 years time served.
Yes I think so, I have a degree and I have also gone through an academy. I will say that the academy prepared me far better for my job than university did.
Now there are even courses, with paid degrees included. Its a no brainer
Depends on the person and the apprenticeship. Some are great some aren’t. Same as degrees.
The main thing that needs to change is that we need to stop pretending that apprentices aren’t used as value adding labour. Pay them a real wage instead of pretending they’re all living at home and getting a free education off the company. They are there doing a job that otherwise wouldn’t be and getting paid pennies.