To be or not to be - Degree Apprenticeships:

Degree Apprenticeships sound too good to be true, right?

There are certainly a lot of benefits, but also drawbacks no one really talks about, lets go through them now.

Benefits:

• No tuition fees

  • Most degree apprenticeships cover your tuition cost completely, with some reducing the fee substantially.

• Earn while you study and work

  • Degree apprenticeships pay you a salary during your time at the program, this can be better than getting a tuition loan, which will come out of your salary like a tax until you pay it off or an x amount of years have passed (40 right now).

• Your skills will go up … by a lot

  • Universities are really good at making you understand the theoretical aspects behind your chosen subject, however, there is not too much application - unless you partake in internships, but these can be unreliable as they are very hard to get into. Degree apprenticeships let you implement what you learn into the workplace, which will allow you learn exponentially faster than your peers.

• Experience

  • The only way to gain experience in traditional university is to get internships, spring weeks, insight days, etc. With degree apprenticeships, that is all sorted for you as you will gain 4 years constant experience, and will put you at a much better position than your peers whilst you are applying for a senior role and they are applying for a grad role.

Drawbacks:

• University life is impacted

  • Degree apprenticeships often only allow you to go university once a week, as they are required to allocate 20% of time studying. However, there are some programmes that allow you to do a block of university and then work, which will allow you to experience some university life.

• Can be very challenging

  • I do not feel like this is stressed enough when talking about degree apprenticeships. Balancing a social life, work, and studies will get to you, and can make you very overwhelmed if you do not know how to deal with it. If you feel like you do not cope well with constant pressure, they may not be for you.

• Fewer opportunities

  • Degree apprenticeships are very competitive, with more and more students applying each year, it is incredibly hard to land offers, so be prepared for a lot of rejections if you do go ahead with it. For context, I got rejected by almost 20 different companies with 4 A* Predicted and a variety of different super-curriculars.

• Employer dependency

  • This is only applicable to some employers, but I have seen some people made redundant from degree apprenticeships as their training provider no longer was willing to go through with the whole program. I have not seen this happen with most top companies, but there is a chance it can happen.
  • UPDATE: It is possible to transfer an apprenticeship to another employer as long as the new role is sufficient in evidencing the KSBs (Knowledge, Skills, and Behaviour - What an apprentice will be graded on in their end-point assessment). Thank you to Rebecca Harrison | LinkedIn for addressing this detail.

• Restricted academic flexibility

  • Whilst this is obvious, you will study modules pertaining to your area of work. For example if you are a software engineer apprentice, your focus on study will be software development. However, if you are unsure on your career path, university can be an excellent time for you to figure out what you want to do whilst studying a broad degree, like mathematics.

If you decide degree apprenticeships are the way to go for you, then carry on with this document.