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UK Announces Hybrid Work/Study Undergraduate Program To Fill Digital Gap
An anonymous reader writes The UK's Digital Economy Minister Ed Vaizey today revealed a new scheme where undergraduates will be able to avoid student fees and student loans by working for companies for three years whilst simultaneously undertaking academic studies with participating universities, resulting in a degree at the end of their successful involvement in the scheme. The British government will fund two-thirds of the cost of tuition and the host employer the remainder. The "Digital Apprenticeship" scheme will remunerate students at an unspecified level of pay, and though details are currently sketchy, is reported to obviate the need for student loans. The initiative is targeting the skills gap in the digital sector, particularly in the field of web-development and technical analysis.
Pay enough, you won't have a shortage. It's called "market forces"
1. It will flood the market with labor, helping lower labor costs for those tech businesses.
2. It will possibly detract from being a well-rounded student. So all the things about being a good citizen and such will be out the door, allowing you to be manipulated a lot easier.
3. Please feel free to mod me down if you disagree.
This is harmful to critical thinking and objectivity when a researcher is indebted (literally or otherwise) to any corporate entity.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
On the one hand, this recognises the reality that the vast majority of what's called "IT" is really at a skilled trade level (not dissing trades or tradespeople; I was a tradesman for many years and now consider myself as an 'academic tradesman').
On the other hand, it's likely to open the door to even more half-interested people wandering through a half-arsed degree just to get some 'qualifications'...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
what's not a myth is the pay gap. Pay people what they're WORTH not what the Law says you can get away with. Cunts.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I learned to write C code by writing code, sitting in an office between two experts, one of whom later sat on the original ANSI C committee that defined the standard. I made mistakes, they told me what I did wrong, and I learned. Based on what I've seen from kids coming out of college, their instructors appear to have been people who couldn't make it as software developers.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Don't get me wrong - I fully understand why this scheme may be good from an educational perspective and I think encouraging employers to invest in the education of the next generation of their staff is a good thing, but I don't understand why this apparently needs the remainder funded by government rather than by the student loans system? Surely it would be better to encourage companies to contribute to the education of any students in relevant fields rather than just this special group? Especially as this would have the effect of reducing pressure on the student loans system (which, for many loans, the tax payer will end up coughing up for when the student finds their degree in tourism from the University of Dudley is actually completely worthless). Not only would it be beneficial for employers, students and the taxpayer it would hopefully help weed out all the non-courses, non-universities and students that probably should be following a career path other than university, that are currently subsidised at taxpayers' expense by the SLC, because no company would pay towards the costs of such a student taking such a course at such a university.
This concept is known as Duales Studium in Germany and is quite well received by students and companies alike. (Keep in mind that university students normally don't pay tuition either in Germany, so that's not the important difference.)
A couple of years back tuition fees were capped at around £3k/yr, the Conservative government (with the help of the Liberal Democrats who actually pledged to make university free like it is in most of Europe or even in other parts of the UK) raised the cap for universities to £9k/yr, effectively tripling the cost. Now they're saying you can pay £3k/yr if you take a job at the same time?
I don't understand all the negativity.
The student will gain as they will have a degree and work experience without the burden of the student loan. The company will have motivated staff with the training and qualifications that they want. The country will have productive members of society with the skills that are required in the industry
gap.zip
Why is the government trying to help get students educated in CS. if this gap really exists then why don't I have a job in this field, I have an undergraduate degree, and the skills needed.
I love how the say they'll subsidize two thirds the cost of a tuition that they just tripled in recent years. I think its also crap how you can buy an imported car at times with nearly 1% APR, but an education that does not depreciate or get repossessed must not only accrue ridiculous finance fees, it now must also involve indentured servitude. The slavery might only last for a few years, but the loan will stay with you longer than you'll remember the curriculum. And that's how the smart and successful people channel their ambitions: serving master. Its a deal with the devil in the details. Slavery doesn't just grow on trees, ya know.
As a matter of fact it would be cheaper to hire qualified workers from emerging countries (Indian programmers, etc.).
For UK students who cannot pay his/her career, being waiter, cleaner and so on is not such a bad thing.
Just [partially] joking.
So, you're an employer who is short of skilled labour. You sign up to a scheme that requires the skilled personnel you do have, let's call her Nellie, to spend a significant fraction of her time training a school-leaver who's been told to sit next to her for three years. After three years the apprentice says 'Thanks for all the help, I've just been offered a nice job with another company.'. Only a C-level executive would think that this is going to work out well.
This sort of scheme has been tried before in the UK. For example, when there was a shortage of physics and maths teachers in schools a decade or so ago. Long story short, it was paying early career physics and maths teachers a bit more that fixed the problem.
A lot of college instructors are far more interested in doing research, either because it's their passion or because they need to keep cranking out publications and getting grant money in order to get tenure. There are some who genuinely do care and want to do a good job, but they've been out of industry for so long that they're out of touch with modern practices.
There are also some students who will cheat their way through, which is as much of an indictment of any system that can't catch them doing it. It's a computer science major. You would think that they would just run a script against some version control system to check if any of the submissions are too similar. It won't catch everyone, but it would at least catch the kids who can't even bother to cheat intelligently.
you know, I've a friend that you wouldn't want to get in a car with. unless you want to be scared to death! They're been driving for over 30 years, but that doesn't make them a good driver.
What I'm saying is, they learned to drive, and passed a test. That was enough to let them loose on the roads. But could they pass that same test if they took it today? Definitely not! (in my opinion).
When it comes to work, we all want to know the smallest amount possible to get paid. For a shop assistant, that's not a lot - but for a software developer, that's an almost impossible list. So we diversify. We all know many skills from many different areas, and unfortunately this has the knock on effect that the ability each person has in any one given area is diluted. This is the software development world we live in, as far as knowing tools and languages are concerned.
What remains, is a basis on which all these tools are languages are predicated : A need to efficiently solve a problem.
These skills are really what's missing in the industry. Sadly, learning a language doesn't make you a good developer. It just means you can write code! But good code isn't easy to find. Too many places I've been to fail to use basic skills nowadays, and still fire-fight their way through a project. No design necessary! A developer hammering away at a keyboard is a productive developer! Who needs unit tests? That slows down development! Who needs integration tests - that's what we have testers for, isn't it??!! As for the developers, they so often have learned from a book, or college - and fundamental skills like object oriented thinking are missing. you end up with a mush of code that's all jumbled together and concerns are dispersed throughout some very tightly coupled code. Did someone swear? I'm sure I heard you say INTERFACES!! Perish the thought! Dependency Injection? Dream on!! events?? it's that like Christmas or something? Delegates?? Don't we vote for them?? Generics? Err- can't think of something silly to say about this. but you get the idea.
My point is, to be good at development, you need problem solving skills, and that only comes with constant challenge, and experience, in my opinion.
It all sounds like too much like hard work, and it's no wonder students shy away from the IT sector. let's measure, mark, and cut some tiles instead. Surely that'll earn you a reasonable wage without all these years of education? Which is precisely why there's so few coming out of education with appreciable skills.
Nothing worse than hearing about a neighbour's kid who's a wizz with computers, and "made his own website" - to find it's just a builder, used to create a blog... yawn...
So the idea of this news story is actually good! However, there's no guarantee they'll be any better off in the educational stakes if the place they go to work for isn't up to scratch. After all, I've gone into places (yeah, I'm a contractor) and been told not to use certain technologies and techniques because their staff aren't up to speed with it.
This brings us to the other end of this same problem : Developers getting either pigeon-holed, or refusing to move with the times. I don't think the solution is to train more kids through work, but I don't think university is doing it either! i think we perhaps need a completely new subject here, one of cooperation, communication, visualization, and design-patterns. Think of it: someone who understands UML, someone who understands collaboration, someone who understands source-control, and branching. Someone who understands object oriented thinking, and design patterns! Java versus c versus c++ versus VB versus C# versus javascript?? not quite so important as having the skills! If you have that, it can be applied what ever language you learn.
back to the apprentice/mentor relationship. I'm not sure why we all buy into the falsehood that specifically targeted for-profit post secondary school is required for any position above minimum wage. Regardless, a system like this will at least help prospects in a new field learn real skills based on real experience while also not starting off their lives smothered in debt.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Nellie keeps doing her job and the Apprentice gets their work. If the Apprentice can't keep up you fire them for incompetence and suddenly they have $20k in tuition bills for what they've used so far (gotta make sure if they get lazy they pay it all back, after all we can't give stuff away for free). Suddenly the dynamics change. The Student will work 60, 70, 80 hours a week because if he doesn't perform they're on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars plus no degree. It's kinda like what they do with H1-Bs. It puts the employer in a tremendous position of power which history tells us they'll abuse.
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Proof that Slashdot is going the way of the Googlegroups
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You overprivileged motherloving bastard.
I learned to write C by ONLY coding mistakes. Then I had to write code to compensate for the first set of mistakes with other mistakes.
When I was finished, it was mistakes all the way down.
That was the fashion. It was how we LIKED IT.
Now, GET THE FUCK OFF MY LAWN
It looks similar to France "alternance formation", where student spend 50% of the time in an a company (being paid as a normal employee being there at 50%), and 50% at high school or university.
Another example of a UK member of Parliament who went to university fully paid for by the state to present a "no brained" option to poorly informed 17-18 year olds (I.e. those who are put off by the "debt" built up under tne current student loan system, not realising that they will, in the majority of cases, pay back far less during their working lifetime then under the old loan system).
University is not just about learning new information to pass exams and obtain a degree, but is about providing a platform for independence and opportunities to mature alongside your peer group. If students spend their time working rather than engaging in sport, socialising or just dealing with day-to-day activities like shopping for yourself, then they won't be able to develop and their time at university will just be an opportunity to be exploited by UK businesses.